View vs Counterview: Did Raanjhanaa’s Ending Really Need AI Fixing?
"It’s the Donald Trumpism of things. You're shocked the first time. By the 100th time, it starts to feel normal."
advertisement
When Eros International Media Limited re-released an AI-altered version of Raanjhanaa's climax—without director Aanand L Rai’s or actor Dhanush's consent—it reignited a debate about the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in filmmaking. Can AI truly serve storytelling, or is it diluting the creative process? Is it a capitalist tool, and a threat to artistic integrity?
The Quint spoke to filmmaker and producer Vikramaditya Motwane; Anav Nayar, a screenwriter and GenAI storyteller; and Mira F Malhotra, graphic designer and visual artist, to reflect on the larger crossroads the film industry finds itself at today. Read on for their views—and counterviews.
Your reaction to the recent debate about Raanjhanaa's climax being altered with AI without the consent of the original creators.
Vikramaditya Motwane: My first reaction like anybody else, including, Dhanush, is why? Why are you doing this? There's no reason to alter it. It's not like the film failed.
Number two, the ethics and the morals of the entire thing. Sure, legally, you have control over the IP because you paid for it, but it's uncool to do this without the approval of the director or your lead actor just because you paid the money. We need a systemic change in the way that we approach ownership.
Anav Nayar: I completely agree that this was wrong because the creator's consent was not taken. If the creator is on board, then I don’t see a problem with it. Legally, they may not have crossed any boundaries, but as an artist myself, I feel it is ethically and morally wrong.
Mira F Malhotra: It’s a very murky territory. If Eros International felt like the ending should be changed, and it will help them—it’s to their advantage. But did they inform the creators beforehand? These decisions are still important to be made as a collaboration otherwise you can make your whole movie through AI. What is talent, then?
Responding to the criticism, Eros International, the sole producer and copyright holder of Raanjhanaa (and its Tamil version Ambikapathy), defended its AI-assisted re-release of the film to The Quint and hit out at what it calls the “unauthorized exploitation” of its legacy in Aanand L. Rai’s upcoming Tere Ishq Mein.
The company says the Tamil re-release — which features an alternate AI-guided ending — is a “lawful, transparently labelled” creative exercise meant to offer audiences a fresh perspective, not a replacement of the original.
Countering suggestions that director Aanand L. Rai or others have any moral or financial claim over the film, the studio reiterated that under Indian copyright law, the producer is the legal author of a cinematograph work. “Eros holds 100% rights over Raanjhanaa, including derivative and adaptation rights,” it said, calling contrary claims “factually and legally baseless.”
The statement also acknowledged the artistic contributions of the cast, particularly Dhanush, but argued that individual performances do not diminish the producer’s ownership. At the same time, it accused Rai’s Colour Yellow Productions of misleadingly marketing Tere Ishq Mein as part of the “world of Raanjhanaa” despite having no legal rights. Eros has issued cease-and-desist notices and initiated legal proceedings on this front.
Positioning itself as a studio with a 4,000-film library, Eros said it is committed to “embracing technology responsibly” while preserving heritage.
In light of this incident, do you think it’s now essential for directors to have a binding agreement that protects their work from being altered by AI—even before they come on board a project?
Vikramaditya: There has to be. There is a need to go back to the current drawing board. What's going to start happening right now is that, on the basis of this, at least directors who are able to, and can control a certain amount of IP, are going to put their foot down. They are going to have contracts signed where one cannot alter anything with AI, and they are going to be able to have control.
Anav: Absolutely, this has to be done. I can speak from a screenwriter's perspective and tell you what the Screenwriters Association is currently doing. Anjum Rajabali, head of the association, is actively fighting for writer's rights, to ensure we don't give all the rights when we sign these contracts. Going forward, I think that similar protections will need to be put in place for filmmakers as well.
But it's such a catch-22 situation. We have to make a film, they (producers) are the ones who fund it, so it becomes a tricky situation to navigate.
The difference is, in the US, when the Writers Guild put down their pens, everyone puts down their pens. The big studios and production houses have to hear them out. Here, if we go on strike, there will be 10 others ready to step and say, "Okay, no problem, they are on strike, but we will write for you." I don't know what the solution to this will be—but definitely, the contracts have to be stronger.
Mira: One thing is set in stone—if you create something, you own it. In India, the standard work-for-hire agreement is drafted without accounting for creative rights. They'll tell you all you can get is a work for hire agreement.
In theory, if there are terms on an agreement, we should be able to adjust them, but you can’t—this is how Indian law is structured. That's why we write our own contracts, clearly stating how we want our artwork to be used. If you get a work for hire agreement, it means your employer holds all the rights. This need to changes—we need stronger agreements, and AI has to be regulated.
What does this mean for artistic ownership on a larger scale? This is, of course, just one incident that has sparked the conversation today—but in the long run, with AI coming into play, what are the deeper implications for creative ownership?
Vikramaditya: That’s a much larger conversation because it’s not just about ownership. I think it’s really about a deeper question: what is art itself, in the age of AI? What is it going to look like going forward? I have been saying this in every interview since the time of CTRL—if you don't have guardrails in place now, or maybe it's already too late, we are going to lose control.
If Eros can do this on one film, and it works, and it turns out to be a cheap way to be able to make changes, it becomes a stepping stone. A way for them to say: "Why do we even need creators? Why do we need writers if we can do this with AI?" And it’s the normalisation of using AI in the creative process just to save costs. At the end of the day, that’s all it is—cost-cutting.
There are no guardrails and no moral protection for filmmakers. Once someone has put money into something, they just presume they own it entirely — and that’s exactly where we are right now.
Anav: I make AI ads for brands, so I spoke to a lawyer recently and she asked me, "How can we help you?" I told her about a digital influencer I am building for a brand and asked her, if in two months from now, a woman sitting in Nepal says, "Oh, this is me", what can I do? And she said, "I don't know. There are no laws for this."
Do you think AI can ever replace the emotional intuition or the lived experiences that a human brings to storytelling?
Vikramaditya: If you're going to start using AI as the foundation for all your work going forward—saying that ChatGPT, or Meta, or whoever, writes you a story based on your brief—then sure, you can finesse it later, but the bulk of the work is already done by AI.
There's multiple things happening together—the post-pandemic boom is over, which means budgets are down, and with that fees and rates are being slashed. Streamers, for example, have cut down spending drastically. People are now working on micro-budget projects, and are writing many episodes for very little money.
Anav: These were thoughts I had in the beginning—and many of my friends and colleagues still have these thoughts. I absolutely do not anymore.
Even if I train the AI model on all of my scripts, that human factor will be missing. I experienced loss at the age of 17—deep loss. No machine can be trained to truly understand that pain… to feel that grief.
I've been going around with my script in Mumbai, but nothing is happening. No one's taking a punt on me. So I thought—"Okay. I have access to AI, and it allows me to tell my story, to express artistically what I want to say. What's is wrong with that?"
To truly write one has to consume good films, good literature, art and culture—then they can use AI and prompt it with that knowledge .You have to feed it something meaningful.
If you just tell ChatGPT, "I want to write a script about a guy and a girl who fall in love, but there's a conflict and the guy dies," you will get a rubbish result. But, if I feed it 30 or 40 pages of something I have written, then it is just a sounding board. That's how I use it.
So, if I'm good enough to be able to give a prompt to AI with my lived experiences, then I would not need those five writers, and I can make do with one writer. Am I right?
Anav: You could be right, but we are losing out four brains in the room. Now, it's just me and the AI. But what if I still have the other four people in the writers' room? One person says something. I feed that into the AI. Another offers a completely different perspective. I feed that in too. In that way, AI becomes an extension of the writers’ room. It’s not replacing it, just amplifying it.
So, according to you it's essential to have those five people in the room?
Anav: In my experience, yes, you need enough writers in the room. I have just co-written a web series with my brother, and we have used AI as well. But we approached it the same way as we would if there was no AI—the level of human involvement remained the same.
If AI becomes a dominant tool, what kind of storytelling do you think we might lose?
Vikramaditya: It’s already happening. There are ad companies that use AI to create content, like 30-second stuff. That 30-second will become a five-minute YouTube video. Even if studios today say, "No, we won’t touch AI," it only takes one person to make something phenomenal on YouTube and then everyone will want to do it. We need severe guardrails put in place now.
Right now, if you say, for every 80% of the work done by humans, 20% is done by machines—that number over history has come down or has gone up, whichever way you look at it, bit by bit. But the danger with AI is that this 80-20 can flip the other way very quickly, and there's nothing anyone can do about this.
Anav: There is truth in that, but I separate the two.
We run an AI agency, and when I pitch to brands, I say, "Why are you spending so much on shooting a video?" I can do it for half the cost. We're creating AI-generated ads, which are good, and instead of one video, the client walks away with four, in their budget. It’s efficient, it works, and it makes sense in that context.
But I’m an artist first. And I don’t believe AI can take over that space. It cannot replace the human experience—and that's where it stops. Yes, people may lose jobs. But the value of true artists? That’s only going to rise.
Like you're saying, AI is here to stay. Do you think there's a space where it can be ethically used, say, as a collaborator? Do you think there's any space for that at all?
Vikramaditya: It can be, as long as it's not being looked at as a pure capitalist tool, which it is right now.
Yes, there are ways for you to enhance your vision. Let’s say I need to shoot a scene that requires very complex tools or elements in the background—I need to be able to execute that. Today, you can achieve a certain level, but with AI, you can push it even further and achieve much more... I get that. I am saying this with the film industry specifically, you can use it in pre-production to be able to plan better, so those kinds of tools can be used for more efficiency.
Anav: Storyboard artists are losing their jobs. They’re the ones who used to sketch every scene by hand. My heart goes out to them. This is the part of AI I struggle with—when efficiency starts replacing people. I use it purely for efficiency. Vikramaditya has a deeper understanding because he works closely with people in the industry, but I feel this AI-driven approach is not going to stick in the long term. I've watched a few movies recently that are clearly written with AI, and they don't do well.
You take a film like Saiyaaraa—you can just tell a human being has written that versus any AI script.
I'm not too worried about AI in the long run. Currently, yes, we will go through a phase. It's new, it's exciting, and it's being experimented with.
I still want to go out and shoot—that excitement, that fun, that love for cinema, where you're working with actors on location, that's always going to be my first love, always. But, AI for me, is a stepping stone.
Mira: People are going to lose their jobs... the bottom line is going to vanish. It’s going to happen rapidly. People who have based their careers on visual arts or any creative industry, will suddenly be left jobless.
It’s not just in the creative space. Even my friends in finance are telling me that may be accountants will get replaced. It might be more visible, but that doesn’t mean it’s not going to happen in other industries.
The more obscure something is, the more difficult it would be for AI if there isn’t enough documentation to draw from. The more generic a thing is, the easier it is for someone to prompt and for an AI to create.
Do you think from an audience perspective, it will really matter to them, say, who wrote the script?
Vikramaditya: No, eventually, no.
At least in my opinion, it's what happened for me during the pandemic when all the advertising suddenly went from studios and professionals, to being shot at home.
So the first time you see it, you're like, "Oh my god! This is terrible. I've never seen anything so bad." And then what happens is that, once it's normalised, and you get used to the idea of these very tacky looking ads on TV, you start to accept that as the standard. And now you've got stuck with tacky ads. I mean, nothing can be done about it.
Anav: I think it is already normal. So much of the content is AI, and people don't realise it's AI, and they also get used to things very quickly. I've been using it since August 2023, and from then till today, my god, it's crazy.
But then again, see, they're getting used to it. So then what are they coming for? For how good it is? What is this piece of art saying? And that's where I am.
Would you be able to weigh in on the ethical or the legal boundaries the film industry could establish before AI becomes a larger part of the industry?
Vikramaditya: You need all your producers, your streamers—everybody needs to sign an AI contract, and put together a whole bunch of guidelines as to how much AI you can use and how much we can't use; what is ethical use of AI, what is unethical use of AI. It has to be done.
When you talk about minimum wage, there has to be a minimum hiring requirement, that has to be across the board. Those are much larger discussions, but they need to start happening now. They should have started yesterday.