Glitz Exclusive/ Imtiaz Ali's take on AI: The future of filmmaking and why creativity will always be

“It’s basically magic,” says Streamberry CEO Mona Javadi (played by Leila Farzad) when she wants to stop Joan from destroying the ‘Quamputer’ - a technological marvel that uses artificial intelligence to create content drawn from the lives of real people, real stories, and then exaggerating incidents to have its viewers watch themselves in “mesmerised horror”.  

The scene is from the British Netflix series Black Mirror titled ‘Joan Is Awful’ (Season 6, Episode 1). The episode has been called a prophecy, a signalling of the times to come, for merely days after the episode released, Hollywood writers and actors went on strike for many reasons, but primarily to guard their jobs against artificial intelligence (AI).

(Imtiaz Ali considers Artificial Intelligence a limited threat | Image: Instagram)

While Joan may be awful and AI in cinema a horrifying idea, Imtiaz Ali, the Hindi filmmaker whose cinema delves deep into the limitations of a templated existence (ala Tamasha) and underscores its futility, while championing the cause of living up to one's creative potential, creativity will always be.

AI - A limited threat for Imtiaz Ali

In Rockstar as in Tamasha, Imtiaz Ali’s protagonists are artists trapped within the limits and expectations of middle-class moralities. Thus for Imtiaz, whose stories often dwell on the barriers the social order sets in front of his characters, and how they transcend them, not in glorious triumph, but in conflicted, continuing struggle, artificial intelligence is a limited threat.

(AI is not the end of cinema, says Imtiaz Ali | Image: File Photo)

“I feel that in this time when everybody is talking about how AI is going to take over our lives and how maybe even people will be redundant beyond a point of time, computers will do their own thing and watch their own programmes, but I feel that that’s not true,” said Imtiaz, when asked how he feels AI will change cinema or the filmmaking process.

Elaborating on why he thinks AI is not the end of cinema as we know it, the Love Aaj Kal director said, “I feel the basis of creativity, the raw creativity will always be.”

Imtiaz on actor's strike in Hollywood over AI

Asked what he thought about the actors’ strike in Hollywood and their apprehension that AI will take away their work, Imtiaz Ali said, “It is not as though computers will make their own films and only other computers will see. I feel that there will always be the basis for original creativity and aesthetics.”

“I think, to tell a story with initiative, a beginning will be necessary. And I think that will always have human intervention.”

But this is not to say that Imtiaz does not see the transformative potential of AI. “Of course, there are lots of things that AI is substituting and we will see how things turn out, but I don’t think that human intervention will be redundant,” he said.

(Imtiaz Ali believes there will always be space for originality and aesthetics | Image: File Photo)

He is also opposed to rejecting AI altogether. “I am looking forward to seeing the result of the various things that are happening in the AI sphere. Firstly, I feel that technology should be embraced rather than rejected.”

“One has to use it well to tell better stories, is what I believe. But yeah, it will take a while for us to settle,” Imtiaz Ali said.