London, UK - There have been many pretenders to the title of "fifth Beatle" over the years, but a bombshell announcement by Paul McCartney suggests artificial intelligence has taken up that mantle to help create one final Beatles song!

When The Beatles were last still together, NASA had just put the first man on the moon, the first Concorde flight had just taken place, and Richard Nixon was president of the US.

A year later, John Lennon’s solo career had taken off with the release of "Imagine". But nine years on from that, he was dead, shot in New York, and whatever hopes fans had for Beatles reunion had perished with him.

However, in the age of artificial intelligence, it now seems "getting the band back together" isn’t what it used to be.

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Announcing what he said would be "the final Beatles record," Paul McCartney told the BBC on Tuesday that AI has been used to "extricate" Lennon's voice from a late 1970s demo tape.

McCartney said the song, which he did not name, would be released later in 2023.

The material is from the same "ropey cassette" of 1970s recordings that were cleaned up and released in 1995 and 1996 as Free as a Bird and Real Love.

The BBC said the soon-to-be-released song would likely be an unfinished love song called Now and Then, which lead guitarist George Harrison was reported to have disliked.