Mid-Day 45th Anniversary Special: Aisha, thoda AI-sa

These days screenwriterdirector Vivek Anchalia is deeply impressed by his assistant His latest assistant is easily among the most efficient ones he has worked with ldquoIf you ask my assistant how itrsquos done he probably wouldnrsquot know but if you tell him how to do it he will do it very efficiently Thatrsquos AI for yourdquo he grinsThat isnrsquot the only addition to Anchaliarsquos life in the past few months His assistant also introduced him to Aisha Bose The pretty wideeyed woman is Anchaliarsquos figment of imagination a fictional character created from scratch by AI The director had her designed especially to front his upcoming music video Cheater saiyaan But there is more to Aisha than just being a modelmdashthe AIgenerated character has her own Instagram account Hit her up on the photosharing app and chances are shersquoll follow you ldquoShe features in my next music video Soon she will begin promoting the song on her Instagram accountrdquo the director tells usVivek Anchalia who created Aisha Bose using AI tools reveals that she has her own Instagram accountAnchaliarsquos first brush with AI happened about eight months ago when he was looking to create a deck to pitch a romantic film that he wanted to make ldquoI needed a deck to show my vision to prospective producers A deck that I wanted would have taken a lot of expertise and money to make I had been figuring out how to do it and then I stumbled upon AI It didnrsquot take me too long to learn its basics I prepared the deck in 16 hours which otherwise would have taken at least three weeks to do even if I had given it to an agency I got a good response to itrdquo The director worked extensively on the AI software Midjourney He recalls that while the tool had a problem in creating consistent characters initially now itrsquos much improvedThe economical waySo in January when he decided to make a music video for a song that he had created with composers Daniel B George and Pratijyoti Ghosh Anchalia knew an AIgenerated video was the best option It was a complex task at hand but was achieved in four days ldquoYou need moving people lipsyncing consistent characters and a story I started working on it Now we are ready with almost two music videos which wersquoll release next month We used six to seven AI platformsmdashMidjourney Runway LumaLabs for animation and DID for lipsync If you have a vision and you know what you want out of it these AI tools can help you achieve it quickly and in an economical wayrdquoThe more specific the prompt the better the imagery the director says ldquoIt takes time to figure the platforms out Itrsquos a lot of trial and error in the beginning because as you are learning the software the software is also learning Itrsquos texttospeech or audiotospeech where you put the audio and it will give you a lipsync video of either the avatar they have or the one you have created The more detailed the prompt is the better it is For instance if I want to see a young man in his 20s walking in front of the Taj Mahal then when I am prompting I should focus on what the subject is what his surroundings are and explain the kind of lighting I want You can even go down to the lens choice if you have that understanding say shot by Kodak or Canon Then the tool gives you that kind of imagery It looks at images already produced by those cameras that are available online and then tries to produce a similar resultrdquoBoon for beginnersTo him AI platforms are particularly excellent for beginners in the business of movies Not to mention that cost and timesaving are two of their biggest advantages ldquoItrsquos a great tool for a lot of new artistes who donrsquot have money and want to put their work out New singers and musicians have talent but itrsquos difficult to get money to get these things produced So this is a way of expressing yourself In my case I would have to spend R67 crore to make that video if not for AI It also saved me timerdquoThere is a growing concern about some human jobs being taken over by AI But Anchalia has a different view He believes the technology advancement is only a way of the less privileged trying to break into the system ldquoI am torn between the two worlds because I also understand that it is snatching some roles that humans have been doing On the other hand 80 to 85 per cent of people in the industry donrsquot have access to anything It is democratising creativity the way YouTube democratised the whole market for filmmakers When too many people are kept out of the system then a parallel system comes up which will help people express themselvesrdquo The director in fact is considering creating more AIcentric jobs for humans ldquoI want to hire people to operate these AI platforms because after a point that also becomes a jobrdquoWhat is it Director Vivek Anchalia designed a special AIgenerated character Aisha Bose for his upcoming music video Cheater saiyaanHow it works He employed AI tools Midjourney and Runway to create the character while LumaLabs was used to achieve movement and animation in the music videos and DID for lipsyncingWho it affectsbenefits Anchalia believes it is a great tool for new artistes who donrsquot have big bucks to shell out and want to showcase their work These software help budding artistes express themselves