That AI-restored Beatles song won Grammy for Best Rock Performance

Feb 03, 2025 07:11 PM - 5 days ago 6793

Jess Weatherbed

Jess Weatherbed is a news writer focused connected imaginative industries, computing, and net culture. Jess started her profession astatine TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

The Beatles person won their eighth competitory Grammy grant acknowledgment to a small thief from artificial intelligence. The 2023 way “Now and Then” — which Billboard reports is the first opus knowingly created pinch AI assistance to earn a Grammy nomination — was awarded Best Rock Performance connected Sunday, beating retired title from Green Day, Pearl Jam, The Black Keys, Idles, and St. Vincent.

The way was pieced together utilizing a demo that John Lennon recorded successful the precocious 1970s, pinch Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison later providing their ain contributions successful the mid-‘90s, pinch the purpose of including the last opus successful The Beatles Anthology project. “Now and Then” wasn’t released, however, owed to method limitations astatine the clip preventing Lennon’s vocals and soft from being separated from the original lo-fi demo.

McCartney and Starr later managed to complete the opus successful 2021 pinch thief from filmmaker Peter Jackson and his sound team, who developed machine-learning technology (a type of AI that uses algorithms to study from data) tin of isolating and cleaning up different components of Lennon’s recording. This greatly differs from generative AI tech that tin beryllium utilized to create euphony that mimics an artist’s style and vocals, but disorder astir AI terminology led to immoderate backlash online erstwhile the way was released.

“To beryllium clear, thing has been artificially aliases synthetically created. It’s each existent and we each play connected it,” McCartney said successful 2023, addressing speculation astir AI’s domiciled successful development. “We cleaned up immoderate existing recordings — a process which has gone connected for years.”

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