Don't Fix The Broken: Ugh AI Rewrites
Re-release of Raanjhanaa
I don't know if you know this about me but I love movies. Give me a good story and I will let myself be absolutely consumed by it. It can be hilarious, devastating, heart breaking or outright rage inducing, but I will let myself go through the entire emotion spectrum for a good film.
And as was said in the Criterion Closet by a genius-
So, yes, films should make you feel uncomfortable when they are a story that is riddled with commentary on our world. Good stories shouldn't only be a solace but should make you face truths that are difficult to swallow.
Then why oh why, has our world come to the re-release of Raanjhanaa with an alternate "happy" ending which AI created.
AI is a travesty that I will firmly always stand against, regardless of what "growth" it might bring to our world. But rewriting the end of a movie that was made to make its audience uncomfortable with our society's realities is a betrayal by every person who let this happen.
They have disrespected Aanand L. Rai and Dhanush and everyone who made this movie. Raanjhanaa was meant to be a movie that mirrored obsessive love, religion, and social stigmas and now with the alternate ending, Dhanush's highly flawed protagonist loses the impact that it was written with - a character who was meant to face consequences for his obsessive behavior instead gets rewarded. Abhay Deol's character loses everything that it stood for. Sonam Kapoor's character becomes a one dimensional woman like every other movie. The film's power lay precisely in its refusal to comfort viewers. It demanded that audiences sit with difficult emotions and examine painful realities. (No spoilers because please please please go see the original)
Using AI has already been controversial, considering how it replaces humans and takes away jobs. But now to use it with explicit contradiction from the original creators is stripping away artist liberty.
It is a distortion of their art and as far as Intellectual Property goes, that's a moral right that no artist can give away. Unfortunately they don't have the economic rights or first authorship in this matter because like almost all cases, they belong with Producers and in this case the producers are money minded, AI using, non creatives with no understanding of what the soul of the movie is.
Pradeep Dwivedi, the chief executive of Eros Media Group said the alteration was an "exploratory baby step" and confirmed that Eros was "significantly evaluating" its library of more than 3,000 releases for similar AI treatments.
"If a finished film can be altered and rereleased without the director's knowledge, it sends out a clear and very troubling message – that the film-maker's voice is dispensable," said Colour Yellow's chief operating officer, Harini Lakshminarayan.
We were worried that AI will be used to write new scripts, new visuals and be the new faces in our movies but companies are now using it to redo previously worked art.
Where is the line?
Why does our art need to comfort us?
Why do our movies have to make the audience feel good about themselves and not make them face unsettling truths?
