Names and faces
■ Pat Sajak is taking one last spin on “Wheel of Fortune,” announcing that its forthcoming season will be his last as host. Sajak announced his retirement from the venerable game show in a tweet Monday. “Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last. It’s been a wonderful ride, and I’ll have more to say in the coming months. Many thanks to you all,” he said. Sajak, 76, has presided over “Wheel,” which features contestants guessing letters to try to fill out words and phrases to win money and prizes, since 1981. He took over from Chuck Woolery, who was the show’s first host when it debuted in 1975. Along with Vanna White, who joined the show in 1982, Sajak has been a television mainstay. The show soon shifted to syndication and aired in the evening in many markets, becoming one of the most successful game shows in history. Sajak will continue to serve as a consultant for three years after his retirement. In recent years, some of Sajak’s banter and chiding of contestants have become fodder for social media. That prompted Sajak to remark in his retirement post about doing another season: “(If nothing else, it’ll keep the clickbait sites busy!)”
■ Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” decades after the band broke up, Paul McCartney said Tuesday. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get Back.” The “new” song is set to be released later this year, he said. Jackson was “able to extricate John’s voice from a ropey little bit of cassette and a piano,” McCartney told BBC radio. “He could separate them with AI, he’d tell the machine, ‘That’s a 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 that we worked on,” McCartney said. “We were able to take John’s voice and get it pure through this AI so then we could mix the record as you would do. It gives you some sort of leeway.” McCartney didn’t give the name of the demo, but the BBC and others said it was likely an unfinished 1978 love song by Lennon called “Now and Then.” The demo was included on a cassette labeled “For Paul” that McCartney received from Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, the BBC reported. McCartney described AI technology as “kind of scary but exciting,” adding, “We will just have to see where that leads.” The same technology enabled McCartney to duet virtually with Lennon, who was murdered in 1980, on “I’ve Got a Feeling” last year at the Glastonbury Festival.