Rana Daggubati on the Impact of AI on Cinema: ‘AI Is Only An Efficiency Tool’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Actor and producer Rana Daggubati has been part of films that have mounted entire fictional universes on screen, like “Baahubali.” With the rise of AI in filmmaking, there’s a possibility of more studios integrating artificial intelligence to create these worlds at a fraction of the cost. But Daggubati makes a strong case for human creativity.

In an exclusive conversation with Variety India about his recently produced film, “Neelira” (“Long Night”), Rana Daggubati speaks about how AI will be increasingly employed as an efficiency tool in creativity. However, it will never completely displace it because AI can never creatively recreate a real human experience, such as someone’s personal trauma, that is so unique to them.

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The actor says, “Like every other technology that came to enhance some kind of efficiency in our lives. Take the internet, for example. Things like messaging or posts that took longer became immediate. I think AI is going to do that in a much more real manner, where, significantly, some repetitive efficiencies in our lives will continue to be there. But if you’re asking in the context of creativity, trauma is something AI cannot create. What someone saw in their life — there is no way to recreate that trauma or that feeling through any AI or any kind of machine. So, for creativity, it will only be a tool. For a long period of time, it will continue to be an efficiency tool.”

Elaborating on its impact on cinema, Daggubati makes a fine point on how the more commonplace large-scale AI-generated fictional worlds become, the more audiences will crave the real world with its intimate human experiences. “I feel like now, with so much scale available to everyone, films of large magnitude and scale can be made in the easiest manner. Films that are human will become far more important because this is the only place where you will start to feel things, understand trauma, and appreciate the beauty of what is real.

I wouldn’t term it art house in any way, but a sense of really pulling you into a world will happen through reality now, and not through big spectacle. Till now, we were always about creating these large worlds, creating these universes. Now I think the real universe will be stuff that’s real,” he shares.

It’s a forecast that echoes industry trends and what many are saying about the rise of technology, pushing more people into choosing an analog world.