Paul McCartney denies wanting to recreate John Lennon's voice for the new Beatles song

“We have seen a lot of confusion and speculation about our new project.” For several days, the comments were going well. It all started on June 13 in a BBC studio, when former Beatles member Paul McCartney announced the release of a forthcoming title from the group separated since 1970. A little thunderclap on social networks, quickly followed by his lot of reviews.

During the same interview, the singer had indicated that he had used artificial intelligence to finalize an incomplete piece of John Lennon. On social networks, Internet users strongly criticized the choice to artificially generate the voice of the artist who died in 1980.

The confusion has arisen from the flash development of many “voice cloning” tools. The latter, more and more efficient, now make it possible to very easily reproduce the voices of the artists and to create from scratch, from a voice and a few chords, unpublished pieces of very famous groups. The same tools had notably enabled fans to create from scratch an unreleased album by Oasis, the brit pop group of the Noël brothers and Liam Gallagher separated since 2009.

In reality, John Lennon's voice will not be artificially recreated, justified Paul McCartney on Twitter. Annoyed by the comments, the artist split a long message in which he puts an end to speculation. "I can't say too much at this stage but to be clear, nothing was created artificially or synthetically," he explains. Everything is real and we all play on it. We cleaned up some existing records - a process that has been going on for years."

According to the BBC, the title of the song, which has not yet been revealed, may come from a 1978 composition by John Lennon called Now and Then. The use of artificial intelligence would make it possible in particular to "clean up" the sound of these recordings, the sound quality of which had previously been considered mediocre.