A new Beatles song has been created with AI approximating John Lennon's voice, Paul McCartney has told BBC Radio 4.

McCartney says the tech has been used to extract Lennon’s voice from an old demo. The song, which he calls “the last Beatles’ record,” will be released this year.

The BBC is speculating that the song in question is “Now and Then,” a 1978 Lennon composition that was on a demo cassette labeled “for Paul” and given to McCartney in 1994 by Yoko Ono.

Two songs from the demo, “Free as a Bird” (1995) and “Real Love” (1996), were cleaned up by producer Jeff Lynne and released with performances by Paul, George and Ringo. The final track was never completed.

McCartney told the BBC that during the creation of Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back documentary series, the director and dialogue editor Emile de la Rey were able to separate Lennon’s voice from the rest of the recording and render it "pure" with the help of AI.

Discussing the impact of AI on music generally, Sir Paul said, “It's kind of scary but exciting because it's the future. We’ll just have to see where that leads.”