The Beatles have not released “new” music since the mid-90s — even at that point it had been a quarter-century since they had previously released music — but thanks to a little help from his new friend, AI, Paul McCartney has revealed plans to release a new song and what he calls the “last Beatles record.”

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 ahead of the release of his new book, Eyes of the Storm, McCartney said that AI technology has been used to “extricate” John Lennon's voice from a demo.

“We just finished it up and it'll be released this year,” McCartney shared.

While the official title was not revealed, BBC seems to believe it's a 1978 Lennon work titled “Now and Then.” The song was already potentially used as a “reunion song” for the Beatles back in 1995 for their Anthology box set series. BBC called the demo “lo-fi” and “embryonic” and stated that the tracks were recorded onto a boombox as Lennon sat at his piano.

Back in 1995 and 1996, Electric Light Orchestra's Jeff Lynne — who has collaborated with some of the Beatles in their solo careers like McCartney's Flaming Pie record (which has a lot of ELO's fingerprints on it — cleaned up and produced two Beatles demos titled “Free as a Bird” and “Read Love” with the remaining members of the band.

During those sessions, the remaining members of the Fab Four did try and record “Now and Then,” but abandoned it since George Harrison refused to work on it. He called Lennon's vocal sound quality “rubbish” and as McCartney recalls, “The Beatles being a democracy, we didn't do it.”

Detailing the process of making this “new” Beatles song, McCartney said, “So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles' record, it was a demo that John had [and] we were able to take John's voice and get it pure through this AI”

He continued, “Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”

Granted, Paul McCartney is self-aware of the optics of using AI for a record — especially a Beatles track. “I'm not on the internet that much [but] people will say to me, ‘Oh, yeah, there's a track where John's singing one of my songs,' and it's just AI, you know?

“It's kind of scary but exciting because it's the future. We'll just have to see where that leads,” he concluded.

Now, this isn't the first time that Paul McCartney has utilized cutting-edge technology in his music. He embarked on the “Got Back” tour last year and one of the biggest treats was seeing Macca sing with Lennon once again. During the song “I've Got a Feeling” — a track with a middle-eight that Lennon sings — a video from Peter Jackson's Disney+ Beatles doc, The Beatles: Get Back, would play and Lennon's isolated vocals rang through the stadium. So not only did Jackson clean up all of that video footage for the docuseries, he somehow cleanly isolated Lennon's vocals to make for a true duet between the two former bandmates. Having seen McCartney in concert prior to this tour as well, I knew that his backing band filled with the uber-talented Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray would generally fill in this part, but seeing him sing and watch Lennon on the big screen was special. It's no wonder why he wants to keep utilizing technology if he can hear and see his old bandmate once again.