In India, AI will rise from the bottom of the pyramid: Shekhar Kapur

AI will democratise movie making, said the director who is making a sequel of Masoom

In India, artificial intelligence (AI) will not emerge from the top. It will rise from the bottom of the pyramid, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur said, “because that is where intuition lives”.

 

In a conversation with Veenu Sandhu on the subject of Cinema in the Age of AI at the concluding session of the two-day Business Standard Manthan summit in New Delhi, Kapur said the conversation about AI is not merely technological; it is civilisational. 

“AI cannot have intuition,” said the director, whose body of work spans Masoom, Mr India, Bandit Queen and the Oscar-nominated Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. “Intuition comes out when there’s need. That’s where the Indian AI will come from.” AI, he said, is nothing but change at an unprecedented pace. “And those that have intuition are going to be able to adapt to change at an unprecedented pace, not the people that are at the top of the pyramid trying to protect themselves.” Those at the bottom of the pyramid, he said, have little to protect and everything to change. 

In his formulation, it is inertia that will determine who thrives in the AI era. “It’s your inertia that will allow AI to win; it won’t win on its own,” he said. “And inertia lives at the top of the pyramid.” 

If the rise of AI will be driven by intuition, its impact, he believes, will be radically democratic, particularly in cinema. 

“AI is the most democratic technology ever to come to us,” Kapur said. He contrasted the astronomical budgets of contemporary blockbusters with the possibilities AI opens up. “A film like Avatar cost $400 million; SS Rajamouli’s RRR cost some ₹300-odd crore? Today, with AI, a kid can make that for ₹10,000.” 

The entry barrier to filmmaking, he said, is collapsing. Kapur, who runs a music school in Dharavi with composer AR Rahman, revealed plans to introduce an AI film school there, “so that we can teach the kids how to make a film and tell their stories,” he said. 

AI in cinema, then, is not an existential threat but another tool, a democratic tool, he said. 

What about the criticism that AI systems are tone-deaf to India’s social and cultural complexities? “That change,” he said, “will happen very fast. It’s happening right now underneath our feet.” 

At its core, he said, AI is about predictability. “AI is a sum of highly complex computerised predictability. But human beings are unpredictable.” 

AI can scrape the entirety of recorded human knowledge about empathy in a microsecond, he said, but that does not mean it can feel. “Ask AI for empathy. It’ll give you an answer. But is it capable of feeling empathy or falling in love? Or feel hope? Having faith, hope, fear, longing — that’s being human.” 

Before asking whether AI will overtake us, he said, we must first ask what it means to be human. 

The conversation ranged from the philosophical to the personal. Trained as a chartered accountant, Kapur left the profession without a roadmap. “I did not leave because I wanted to be a filmmaker. I left because I wanted to see what life was all about,” he said. “I realised that what I needed to do was to plunge myself into chaos. And I haven’t stopped.” 

It took him 12 years from quitting accounting to making Masoom. Chaos is something he talks about often. “Chaos is the understanding that there are no controls. Control is the greatest illusion.” 

His recollection of Masoom’s release is now part of film lore. Black marketers bought all the tickets, leaving theatres empty and creating the impression of a flop. “I was told I have made too artistic a film,” he recalled. But days after the release, something changed. The film was suddenly a hit because of word of mouth. 

On AI-generated stardom, Kapur said, “Movie stars itself will be AI created. It’s gone, this era,” he said. “How many of you have actually met Tom Cruise? How do you know he exists? He exists because you believe he exists.” If belief constructs stardom, then creating an AI character that audiences believe in is only a matter of storytelling. 

He even recounted how his cook once presented him with a storyline for a sequel to Mr India, developed using ChatGPT. “It turned out to be the best story,” he said, amused. The cook had suggested that AI could recreate iconic characters such as Mogambo (played by Amrish Puri) and “Hawa Hawaii” (Sri Devi) who are no longer alive. 

There is a point where Kapur draws a line. AI cannot generate true unpredictability, he insisted, and that is the essence of storytelling. He imagines a future where cinema has no fixed script. Instead, AI would respond in real time to audience reactions, altering scenes based on emotional cues. Each screening would be different. “It depends on what the audience is feeling at that moment,” he said. “You see one show, the next show will be different.” 

But that vision raises a question. If each viewer experiences a different film, what binds us together? In India, a film like Masoom binds generations because of shared emotional memory. 

On the question of whether there is a sequel to Masoom, he replied, “Yes, I’ve just written it.” Will it be as good? “I don’t know. The audience has changed. I’ve changed. Let’s see. The unpredictability of it.” 

Does that uncertainty worry him? “It has to be done. You have to climb the mountain. There will be a storm. You can slip. You can fall.” 

There is no AI in the Masoom sequel, he clarified, though he is using AI in other projects, including Pali and an ambitious intergalactic story, Warlord, that would be too expensive to mount without it. 

In the end, Kapur returned to first principles. “Storytelling will never change,” he said. “As long as storytelling can be unpredictable… AI cannot tell you an unpredictable story. It’s very simple.”