Megastar Amitabh Bachchan shared his thoughts on technological advancements and artificial intelligence (AI) in the film industry.
During his address to the students at the Symbiosis Film Festival on Saturday, he remarked, “There have been a lot of technological changes, not just in chips but in the way films are made, edited, etc. What worries me is that no invented technology has a lifespan of more than two to three months. One thing of great concern is AI. All of us are now being subjected to face mapping. And our entire body is going to be face-mapped and kept aside for use at any point in time. Just yesterday, a popular studio in Mumbai gave a demonstration of face mapping on Hollywood veteran Tom Hanks. I saw a clip of Tom Hanks, and the same thing with a 20-year-old Tom Hanks.”
“A lot of objections are being raised, and I believe that there’s some kind of a strike in Hollywood by the artists because the producer and the director claim your face mapping, asserting that it is their property and they will use it whenever they want. So, there will be a time when Symbiosis will call my AI and not me personally,” Amitabh added.
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Veteran actors Amitabh Bachchan and Jaya Bachchan attended the inaugural ceremony of the Symbiosis Film Festival at Symbiosis International University in Pune.
Big B also addressed the criticism that the film industry receives for supposedly changing the country’s morals. Bachchan argued that society has always been an inspiration for cinema, rather than the other way around.
He shared, “Many times the film industry, known as the largest film industry in the world, comes under a lot of criticism and all kinds of accusations that you are responsible for changing the morals of the country and changing the attitude of the people.”
“I’m sure that Jaya, who has studied formally at the Institute, would endorse the fact that stories and films are made from experiences that we notice in nature, in the world, in everyday life, and that is what becomes our inspiration,” he added.
Bachchan remembered how his late father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan would watch several Hindi films on repeat.
The actor stated that his father enjoyed the poetic justice part of cinema. “Cinema in itself has its power. During the last years of my father’s life, every evening he would watch a film on television on cassette. Many times, the films that he saw were repeated. I asked him every evening, ‘You have watched the film, aren’t you bored? What do you find in Hindi cinema?’ He said, ‘I get to see poetic justice in three hours. You and I will not get to see poetic justice in a lifetime’. And that is the learning that cinema gives to all.”
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Big B praised regional cinema, particularly Malayalam and Tamil films, for their authenticity. However, he rejected the idea that South cinema is doing better than Hindi cinema. He stated that they are making similar films.
“We have been making films that have been inclusive all along; it’s just that the communication wasn’t as efficient and rapid as today. We were not exposed to that kind of cinema or perhaps that kind of lifestyle because of computerization. Everything is available at the press of a button. The speed of representation has become very rapid now. If you compare the number of edits from the movies in the 50s to today’s examples like ‘Baahubali’ or ‘RRR,’ it was three to four times more than today’s. Regional cinema has been doing very well. But when we talk to them, they say they are making the same kind of films that we do in Hindi. They just change the dressing so that they look beautiful.”
“A lot of the people I’ve met said, ‘We are remaking your old films; there’s ‘Deewar,’ ‘Shakti,’ and ‘Sholay’ somewhere in all our stories.’ Malayalam and some of the Tamil cinema are very authentic and aesthetic. This whole idea of pointing fingers at a particular region and saying that unki achi chal rahi hai humari nahi (they are better than us) is not right,” he concluded. (ANI)