LONDON (AP) — Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” decades after the band broke up, Paul McCartney said Tuesday.

McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” The “new” song is set to be released later this year, he said.

Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney told BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine ‘That’s a voice, this is a guitar, lose the guitar’.”
“So when we came to make what will be the last Beatles record, it was a demo that John had that we worked on,” he added. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as you would do. It gives you some sort of leeway.”

McCartney didn’t identify the name of the demo, but the BBC and others said it was likely to be an unfinished 1978 love song by Lennon called “Now and Then.” The demo was included on a cassette labeled “For Paul” that McCartney had received from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, the BBC reported.

McCartney described AI technology as “kind of scary but exciting,” adding: “We will just have to see where that leads.”

The same technology enabled McCartney to “duet” virtually with Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, on “I’ve Got a Feeling” last year at Glastonbury Festival.

The singer-songwriter is set to open an exhibition later this month at the National Portrait Gallery in London featuring previously unseen photographs that he took during the early days of the Beatles at the start of “Beatlemania,” when the band rose to worldwide fame.

The exhibition, titled “Eyes of the Storm,” showcases more than 250 photos McCartney took on his camera between 1963 and 1964 — including portraits of Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Lennon, as well as Beatles manager Brian Epstein.

FILE – Paul McCartney and Nancy Shevell pose for photographers upon arrival for the premiere of the film ‘If These Walls Could Sing’ in London, Monday, Dec. 12, 2022. Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” Paul McCartney said Tuesday, June 13, 2023. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” (Photo by Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP, File)

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Mega Millions jackpot increased to an estimated $940 million after another drawing Tuesday resulted in plenty of losers but not a single grand prize winner

The numbers drawn late Tuesday night were: 25, 29, 33, 41, 44 and gold Mega Ball 18.

The next drawing is scheduled to be held Friday night.

The new $940 million jackpot is for a winner who chooses to be paid through an annuity over 29 years. Nearly all winners opt for a cash payout, which for Friday night’s drawing would be an estimated $483.5 million.

In Tuesday’s drawing, there were more than 2.9 million winning tickets of various amounts including three $4 million tickets sold in Arizona, Mississippi and South Dakota, Mega Millions said in a statement.

The lack of a winner of an estimated $785 million jackpot Tuesday means there have been 23 straight drawings without anyone taking the top prize.

The new jackpot will remain the sixth-largest jackpot in U.S. history.

The jackpot-winning drought isn’t surprising given the daunting odds of one in 302.6 million of winning the top prize.

The jackpot is the largest since someone in California won a record $2.04 billion Powerball prize on Nov. 8. There still has not been an announced winner of that prize.

There have been only three larger Mega Millions jackpots than Friday’s estimated prize in the game’s 20 years, including $1.53 billion in 2018, $1.05 billion in 2021 and $1.33 billion in July, Mega Millions said.

Mega Millions is played in 45 states as well as Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

A clerk at Broad Street Liquors updates the Mega Millions jackpot at the store’s lottery counter, Tuesday, Jan. 3, 2023, in Timonium, Md. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

New York City officials and the New York City Football Club have reached an agreement to build a 25,000-seat soccer stadium in Queens right next door to Citi Field. The stadium will be the centerpiece of a planned mixed-used development for the site near the New York Mets home that was once filled with auto body shops.
The new soccer-specific stadium is expected to be completed by 2027 and the development would also include a 250-room hotel and 2,500 units of housing. New York City officials say limited public money would be used for the project and that NYCFC would be paying the entire cost of the stadium, which is estimated to cost $780 million.

(AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)