From ‘Yesterday’ to Silence: Paul McCartney Joins Over a Thousand Artists to Protest AI and the New Challenges Facing Copyright

Earlier this year, over a thousand artists came together to release the album Is This What We Want?. Per the project’s website, it was made in response to proposed copyright law changes in the UK, which would “allow artificial intelligence companies to build their products using other people’s copyrighted work — music, artworks, text, and more — without a licence.”

The gimmick is that the whole project is recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, “representing the impact we expect the government’s proposals would have on musicians’ livelihoods.” Now, a vinyl edition is coming out, and Paul McCartney has contributed an also-silent bonus track.

The Guardian notes the song is two minutes and 45 seconds “of an almost completely silent recording studio,” and that all can be heard is “only quiet hiss and the odd clatter.”

In a BBC interview earlier this year, McCartney said of AI, “You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it. They don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off. The truth is, the money’s going somewhere. Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote ‘Yesterday’?”

McCartney seems to not be completely against AI, though, as it was used to bring “Now And Then,” the “final” Beatles song, to life in 2023. He said at the time, “[Peter Jackson] was able to extricate [John Lennon’s] voice from a ropey little bit of cassette. We had John’s voice and a piano and he could separate them with AI. They tell the machine, ‘That’s the 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 [and] we were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI. Then we can mix the record, as you would normally do. So it gives you some sort of leeway.”