Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur, the International Film Festival of India's Director, recently talked to Berlinale Director Tricia Tuttle and the IFFI audience about the capabilities of AI technology. The filmmaker, who is creating an AI-based feature film called Warlord, said that the piece of technology cannot substitute great actors and the energy that comes with collaborating with such talents. He revealed that actors such as Shabana Azmi and Cate Blanchett bring certain expressions and emote certain feelings in close-up shots that AI cannot do. According to the filmmaker, who worked with Shabana in Masoom and with Blanchett in Elizabeth, great actors can form a subconscious connection with the audience. "AI cannot do this yet," he said.
Shekhar Kapur also revealed that his cook once approached him with an AI-based screenplay for a prospective sequel to Mr India, his iconic 1987 film starring Anil Kapoor and Sridevi. "He came to me with so much enthusiasm. I genuinely didn't know what to appreciate first — the meal he had cooked or the script he had written," Shekhar quipped (as quoted by the Times of India). Subsequently, a person from the IFFI audience asked him whether his cook could write the screenplay due to the existence of the original film, and the filmmaker responded by saying that it is natural to have such an influence. "It took me ten years to write this script, and it takes ten days to do it with AI tools," the filmmaker said wittingly.
