The Beatles caused quite a stir late last year when they released a song and disclosed that it had been finalized with the use of artificial intelligence. That was because it featured the vocals of the late John Lennon, which many at first assumed had been re-created using deepfake technology. That wasn’t the case, though.
The group just used AI to pull out Lennon’s vocals from a 60-year-old recording, which was of too poor quality to isolate his voice with older technology. The technique, known as “stem separation,” has now been used in music a number of times. For example, it was used on the final track of SZA’s album SOS to clean up the audio of an Ol’ Dirty Bastard sample.
While the album SOS was nominated for a Grammy last year in several categories, the song “Forgiveless,” which utilized stem separation, was not. “Now and Then” was recently nominated for this year’s awards for both Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance, marking the first time an individual AI-assisted song has been nominated for the Grammys.
