Makers of Tamil actioner Weapon uses AI to create young Sathyaraj: ‘He plays a character with superpowers in this film’

Team Weapon recently announced that they employed Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to depict a young version of Sathyaraj in the film.

“Sathyaraj sir plays a character with superpowers. We have a portion explaining how this character got his superpowers. It is for this sequence that we have used AI, to generate the look of the character in his younger years and how events unfolded in the past,” director Guhan Senniappan told ETimes.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Guhan Senniappan (@guhan_senniappan)

“Of late, we have been seeing a lot of AI-generated images on social media, and they look terrific. AI can generate whatever we want, but it involves trial and error, for now. Since we had footage of the artistes and the locations, it was easier for us,” he added.

Expanding on the procedure, producer MS Manzoor told ETimes that they assembled a team of five experts to accomplish the task. “We used an open-source software with an AI plugin and created 3D images. While films like Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One have used AI, we believe this is the first such attempt in Indian cinema,” he said.

This comes at a time when Hollywood is witnessing a major strike by actors and screenwriters who are advocating for safeguards against the use of AI in films, along with various other demands.

While Weapon’s cinematography is handled by Prabhu Rhagav, Nash is in charge of editing the flick and its music has been composed by Ghibran.