AI invades Indian cinema

AI has gone from an experimental aid to a common tool in cinema, applied to everything from casting and writing to de-ageing. Lounge surveys Indian film's brave new AI landscape

- Suchin Mehrotra

On 3 January, the trailer for Vijay's Jana Nayagan dropped. Amidst the fan adulation, especially feverish since this is Vijay's last film before he turns to politics, a number of viewers spotted something amiss at the 23-second mark, a shot of Vijay with a rifle. In the lower right corner of the screen was a watermark of Google Gemini, an AI tool. The watermark has since been removed and it remains unclear how AI was used to enhance the trailer, or the final film, which is stuck in an ongoing battle with the censor board. Yet, its very presence speaks to the rapid rise of AI in Indian filmmaking over the last couple of years and the uncertainty around how it's being used.

There are wildly varying opinions on AI in filmmaking. It's a shiny new toy. It's a useful tool that can save time and money. It limits art. It expands cinema. It's a slippery slope that collapses creativity and limits the need for imagination. It can help create what we've never seen on screen before. It's not art if it emerges from a prompt. It is art if it moves you, regardless of how it's created. It's not a film if 300 people on a film set are replaced by 30 typing furiously into a computer. It's actually not that simple, and those 30 people are themselves artists guiding stories into being. It's the end of storytelling as we know it. It's the future.

Wherever you fall on the debate, what's clear is this is only the beginning. Conversations with several Indian filmmakers, writers and producers confirm that AI has already begun retooling workflows and reshaping the filmmaking process, from screenwriting to casting, shooting and post-production.