Rajinikanth is set to dominate the box office on 10th of October with his upcoming film Vettaiyan. The film boasts many big names but the most significant thing regarding the cast is the inclusion of Amitabh Bacchan. The duo will be seen together on-screen after a long wait since their last film together- Hum (1991).
As the film has been shot in Tamil primarily, Prakash Raj was used to voice Big B’s dialogues in Tamil, which was seen in the Prevue that released recently. But the fans did not seem happy and the Prevue received backlashes from many people. They claimed the voice was unsuitable for the actor and felt very unnatural. To tackle the problem, the makers came up with an innovative idea to use AI to replace Amitabh’s voice which will make the voice over closer to his original voice.
This will be a revolutionary feat in the world of cinema. Many people do cross-cultural films and the problem of language occurs in often cases. Often the actors’ dialogues are dubbed by other people and the actor’s presence loses its authenticity in return. This has happened with several films like Aadipurush- where Prabhas was dubbed for Hindi, Maharaja- where Anurag Kashyap was dubbed for Hindi etc. Using AI will make the voice over more interesting as we will be able to enjoy our favourite actors in their original (near to original voice).
The use of AI, however, can be problematic in many degrees as well. First of all, if AI is successfully utilized in Vettaiyan, it will mean in future projects people will choose AI to dub their films leading to the loss of the jobs of many voice-artists. Furthermore, the act of speaking a dialogue isn’t only about reading out the lines, it is also about feeling the lines. To speak the dialogue with conviction, commitment and passion is what makes an actor. AI can imitate the voices of actors, but it won’t be able to speak as passionately as the voice-artists do.
We all have seen the deepfake reels of many celebrities that are quite popular these days, but one can easily understand they are fake because they only imitate the voice. With a big budget, the quality of AI voice-over will improve, but it will never bring the aura or compassion of the actors whose voice it will be imitating. Voice-artists may not sound like the actor, but their dedication and passion leads to some unforgettable performances where an actor cannot be identified without that artist’s voice- like Sanket Mhatre for Allu Arjun and Sharad Kelkar for Prabhas.
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