London, Jun 13 (IANS): Artificial intelligence (AI) has helped Sir Paul McCartney to create the "the final Beatles record" which is likely to be a 1978 John Lennon composition called "Now And Then", the media reported on Tuesday.

Lennon wrote "Now And Then' during his "retirement" era, when he had no record contract and was busy raising his son, reports the BBC.

McCartney was quoted as saying in the report that AI was used to "extricate" Lennon's voice from an old demo so he could complete the song.

"We just finished it up and it'll be released this year," he was quoted as saying.

The song is considered as a possible "reunion song" for the Beatles in 1995, as they were compiling their career-spanning Anthology series.

The demo was one of several songs on cassettes labelled "For Paul" that Lennon made shortly before his death in 1980, which were later given to McCartney by Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono.

It was largely recorded onto a boombox as Lennon sat at a piano in his New York apartment.

In 2009, a new version of the demo, without the background noise, was released on a bootleg CD.

In the intervening years, Sir Paul has repeatedly talked about his desire to finish the song.

According to The Guardian, the idea to use AI to reconstruct the demo came from Peter Jackson's eight-hour epic "Get Back".

"For the documentary, dialogue editor Emile de la Rey used custom-made AI to recognise the Beatles' voices and separate them from background noise," the report said.