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While the film industry has seen several iconic director–composer collaborations over the decades, the Lokesh Kanagaraj–Anirudh Ravichander duo ranks among the most celebrated in contemporary Indian cinema. Having first worked together on Lokesh’s third directorial venture, the Thalapathy Vijay-starrer Master (2021), Anirudh has composed the music for all of the director’s films — Vikram (2022), Leo (2023), and Coolie (2025) — since then.
Interestingly, Lokesh recently stated that he is unlikely to work with a different musician in the future, highlighting the strength of their bond. When asked if he would consider employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create music for his movies, Lokesh said at the SSVM Transforming India Conclave 2025 in Coimbatore, “I will never do a film without Anirudh in the future. If he quits cinema, I’ll have to think about using AI for music. But that’s not going to be the case anytime soon.”
“I still don’t know AI fully and am still in the learning phase. I am neither against nor into AI, but a story can only be written by a human being,” he shared, adding that if he were to make use of AI in any aspect of filmmaking, it would be for casting, as he believes this would help reduce the time spent on finding the right people through long auditions.
During the interaction, Lokesh Kanagaraj also confirmed that they used AI while crafting the flashback scenes in his latest outing Coolie (2025). “In the flashback sequence in Coolie, Rajinikanth sir performed that scene, and we used de-ageing technology to show his younger self. But his voice was generated using AI.”
Lokesh, nonetheless, did not hesitate to point out the positive changes AI has brought to filmmaking, helping everyone involved. “AI is helpful to me in a few ways. It helps me with references. It is also beneficial for pre-visualisation. In the past, we always used storyboards for this. An artist would physically sit and draw every frame. In a 5-minute scene, there will be 600 to 700 frames and one person will draw all these frames for pre-visualisation. Now, with AI, the process is simplified, as it does the same thing in two days. In comparison, an artist would take at least 10 to 15 days. However, this does not mean that the livelihood of an artist would cease to exist. We will continue to use them in other areas,” he added.
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