‘Pehle Bhi Main’ from Animal is one of the rare recent soft romantic tracks that have caught the fancy of the audiences. The song, sung by Vishal Mishra, has has ruled the charts since it was released. It has also been a trending song on Instagram for months with many covers being created too. The one cover that went viral was an AI-generated one, and featured the vocals of the late Mohammed Rafi. The song’s lyricist Raj Shekhar spoke to DNA about the phenomenon, its AI version, and the pros and cons of artificial intelligence.
“The kind of love Pehle Bhi Main has received is tremendous. When you make a song, you never imagine this. I attended a concert of Vishal Mishra, where he sang this song, and it was an out-of-body experience for me. Ten thousand people singing your song is an amazing experience,” says Raj Shekhar.
Pehle Bhi Main has been picturised on Ranbir Kapoor and Triptii Dimri in Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Animal. The song got a new lease of life on social media when Anshuman Sharma and Aditya Kalaway created an AI-generated version of the song in Rafi’s legendary voice. The video has over 2 million plays on Instagram. Talking about the version, Raj Shekhar says, “Mohammed Rafi sahab is my all-time favourite singer. I had never imagined him singing my words. That song was trending on Instagram for so long and they have created that AI-version so beautifully too. Anshuman Sharma is the creator. He has captured Rafi sahab’s style and mannerisms so well in the song. I sent it to my father, who is a big fan of Rafi sahab. He was awestruck and I explained him how this was done.”
Raj Shekhar is all praises for AI but adds that it needs to be treated with caution, like any new technology. He argues, “AI, if used well, is a beautiful tool. We can hear Rafi sahab, Manna Dey, or Lata didi singing our songs, modern songs. Everyone wonders what that would be like and AI gives us that. But we should not forget that somebody has created it, sung it, and their credit must be recognised.”
In fact, the lyricist cautions about the trend of AI-generated film scripts, something that Bollywood is mulling now. “In a lot of places, they are talking about AI-written scripts. A big ethical dilemma there is who does that script belong to. AI generates content, it does not create something new. It used references and learnings to generate something. Then, who does that script belong to because AI must be taking ideas from some earlier work of some writer. Here, we need to see what is the right of the writer. If some writer is involved in refining this, how much is he owed in terms of rights. We can’t stop this advance of technology but we need to be prepared for this,” he says.
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