The One Laptop Per Child Foundation is using Lennon’s likeness and simulated voice, with Yoko Ono’s permission, to promote donations of solar-powered laptops to children in Third World countries.

The commercial uses a computer-generated voiceover that sounds like Lennon, saying “I tried to do it through my music, but now you can do it in a very different way. You can give a child a laptop and more than imagine. You can change the world.”

Digital reanimation has been around for a long time, notably in the 1997 commercial where Fred Astaire “danced” with a Dirt Devil.

“It was creepy then; it’s creepy now,” said PC World.