By Erick Last night I went and saw Coolie – lucky to have seen it the day it released. As a life long Rajni fan, I was expecting to see a bunch of CGI, slow motion, back stories, super-unrealistic fight scenes and Rajni’s very underrated dialogue delivery. I wasn’t disappointed.
Anyway, after the movie one of my friends made a comment “there was a bunch of CGI, but wonder how AI was used”. And I’ve been thinking about it all night and hence on today – happy Independence Day by the way 🇮🇳 – I need to pen my thoughts on this blog post.
The best way to talk about this is two very recent AI-related news pieces that are right at the centre of this.
The Raanjhanaa Ending Controversy
As a so-called “Northie” growing up in Chennai, I was fortunate to be able to enjoy art that’s both Hindi and Tamil language. I saw Maadhavan in Alai Payuthey way before seeing Maadhavan in 3 Idiots. Similarly, I saw Dhanush in Pudhupettai well before seeing Dhanush in…. the Why This Kolaveri music video. Or Raanjhanaa.
A few weeks ago, Eros apparently re-released Raanjhanaa with an ending that was altered by AI. I’m going to try and say this without any spoilers. The AI-altered engine – while seemingly small – leaves a much different impact on the view when compared to the original.
See what Dhanush himself says:
The other interesting thing about this episode is – Eros, who owns the rights to the film, basically says they can do whatever they want because they own the rights to the film.
As on date, there is no regulation that protects the creator as Dhanush says. Since Eros owns the “rights” to the film, they are right in which they could do whatever they wanted with it. But this should be about more than rights. It’s the art – and the artist, and the entity owning the rights pissed the artists off.
Maybe I’ll do another post about copyright and how the internet thrives on a very loose set of copyright laws. For now, people are allowed to run wild using AI to alter art that someone else has created. And that’s not okay.
Rahman Commits to AI
How I was saying I was fortunate to grow up on the crossroads of Tamil and Hindi language arts? Coincidentally, this post is about two such artists.
Last month, AR Rahman – living legend of a musician – announced he’s collaborating with Open AI on a project called Secret Mountain. He says it will empower and uplift Indian minds to use…. you can see it for yourself:
To be honest, my immediate reaction to this post was “if Rahman is doing it it’s fine”. Then I put my tech-objectivity independent hat on. This needs a bit of thought.
Over 30+ years, Rahman has proved that he clearly does not need AI or any sort of technology to create memorable melodies. However, he has always been a proponent of using technology to advance the state of music, i.e. how it sounds to the masses. What this means is that he comes up with wonderful melodies, which sounds a tad better than if other composers did it because he ad his team have always stayed up to date with technology – both hardware and software- to make it sound world-class. Remember that earlier we only had casettes (okay I know many of you are not that old but still) and televisions and movie theaters to consume media. Lossless audio and high quality headphones for consumers is a fairly recent trend.
It’s still not clear how Rahman is using AI for this project so this post cannot be completed for now. Is he using it to generate music itself? Or is he creating music as he always does, the “traditional” way, and just using AI to make it sound better. For me, I don’t think he Neds to use AI to create music as much as he may use AI to make it sound better on specific devices. For example, he may mix his recorded music in such a way it wonder better though cell phone speakers.
But The Beatles used AI…
… for their last single Now and Then released in 2022. Thing it, the singe was not composed using AI. The AI was to make John Lennon’s vocals more legible (hearable?) so the song could be completed and released. This is literally using AI to bring John Lennon back from the dead to complete a track.
I’ll admit, this was kinda cool.
Black Mirror Scenario?
Looking at the music and film industries in particular, there are several examples of technology that literally brought people back from the dead on stage. This was even before the age of AI. Take for example, bringing Elvis Presley back on screen with a live orchestra 40 years after he died. And even if they are not dead, imagine Abba using holograms to “perform” live nearly 40 years after they broke up.
These are arguably keeping legacies alive. But it would get creepy after a point – like, what if technology gets to a point where a humanoid can think, walk and sing like Elvis Presley and even interact with the audience like him. That means that, in essence, Elvis can live forever. Isn’t this what Black Mirror warned us about?
Let me know what you think – is it ok to have artists (or rights owner) use AI to create, or to just improve their creations.