By now we've all witnessed the hype around The Beatles' latest track, which used AI to resuscitate an old demo written and performed by John Lennon. The touching track in itself is a masterful piece of AI-augmented art, but while it's one thing to recreate a lost voice, visually reviving late Beatles members is a completely different matter.
In the 'Now and Then' official music video, we see old clips of the Fab Four spliced together with new footage of surviving members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. The wholesome yet uncanny result is a great display of the advancements in AI technology, but I can't help but feel like we're getting into troubling territory. sunset scene with a youthful video of the gang in their '60s hayday pasted over it. Touching and fairly innocuous stuff thus far.
It isn't until the building chorus that we're graced by the bizarre appearance of an AI-augmented Sgt. Pepper's era George Harrison and a waving John Lennon, who grooves to the sombre track uncomfortably out of time. Throughout the video we see the current stars singing alongside their departed friends . The visual alone is a jarring and quite frankly disturbing reunion – a prime example of AI's uncanny capabilities.