Anurag Kashyap says ‘Hindi cinema isn’t making anything original’, Vikramaditya Motwane feels 45-minute ads are killing theatres | Bollywood News
Artificial intelligence is not the future… it is the present, and it has started to play a pivotal part in multiple professions, including cinema. In a recent conversation at the Synapse Conclave, a few of the most pioneering voices of Indian films weighed in on the influence of AI in cinema. Anurag Kashyap, who seems to utilise every opportunity to take a dig at mainstream Hindi cinema, didn’t miss this one either. “If you are talking about influence of AI in Hindi cinema, they have not made anything original recently. It is mostly remakes, and honestly, AI can help them with better copies and better remakes,” said Anurag, who also spoke about how his issue with AI isn’t just restricted to the impact of the technology in the creative side of things.
Anurag spoke about how the AI servers need a lot of water to cool down, and to illustrate his point, recalled an anecdote about the shooting of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. “When Danny used smaller cameras to shoot in the slums, and the feed was going back to the laptop. They had icepacks to cool down the system. Imagine the amount of coolant that AI servers would need. In fact, research suggests that every AI prompt uses 16 ounces of water, and if it is used in the rate it is used right now, 2027, we would use the same amount of water Denmark uses to just cool the servers,” said Anurag, hoping to open minds to the pitfalls of over-reliance on AI.
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His fellow panell, filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane, pointed out that AI is actually better for end users and not filmmakers. “For end users, AI is lovely. You can use it to make a movie for one. AI might help you to watch a Star Wars film with the user playing the role of Luke Skywalker. AI will make things easier,” said Vikramaditya, who insed that AI will not sound the death knell for cinema theatres.
Emphasising that the collective will not go away, Vikramaditya said that cinema theatres have been in similar situations before too. “We have been hearing about death of movies right from the time of VHS tapes, satellite televisions, and the advent of the internet. Of course, the regularity might go down, but you will still go to the movies,” said the Udaan filmmaker.
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Putting a final knot on this conversation about movie-going experience taking a dig at multiplexes like PVR, he said, “Well, if Ajay Bijli (CEO of PVR) continues with his 45 minutes of advertising, obviously you are not going to go to the theatre.” Anurag concurred: “Well, the reason for Ajay to be in the movies is very different from why we are all there in cinema.”
