AI not the main ingredient

Vijay Subramaniam. Pic/By Special Arrangement; (right) Hansal Mehta. Pic/Instagram

Nearly 26 years after he left Khana Khazana, filmmaker Hansal Mehta is returning with another cooking show, Khana Dil Se. The upcoming cooking show has garnered interest for its star ingredient - Artificial Intelligence (AI). Talking to mid-day, ahead of Khana Dil Se's release, producer Vijay Subramaniam, however, insisted that AI-led shows will still depend on human emotions. "Technology can help scale production. But it still takes a filmmaker like Hansal Mehta to know what emotional truth he is trying to capture in a story like Khana Dil Se," he said.

The larger goal, he said, is to use AI to help creators attempt "bigger worlds and more ambitious storytelling without the traditional limitations of time and cost."

Last year, Subramaniam - founder of Collective Artists Network - was publicly criticised by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap when the former announced an AI-generated film, Chiranjeevi Hanuman - The Eternal. Kashyap slammed the move as it threatened the interests of filmmakers and writers of the Indian film industry.

When asked about it, Subramaniam sidestepped the question, instead saying, "We believe the technology could eventually reshape entertainment formats themselves. Streaming changed how stories were written. Social media changed audience interaction. I suppose AI could do the same."

He, however, maintained that originality cannot be generated by software. "Originality comes from people. The goal is not to remove artistes from the process. It's to give more creators access to tools that were limited by budget or infrastructure."

May 12
When ‘Khana Dil Se' is set to stream on Youtube