Sridevi's viral AI reworked images, set to the slowed tempo of a Lamhe song is trending on social media. On one hand, its a fan tribute to the late icon, pixelated fan fiction, a cyber program that has envision Sridevi, a digital programmer/artist's vision of how they'd like to see Sridevi had she lived longer than her curtailed 54-year life.
A technicolour life of 50 years on film that faded to black suddenly one fateful February night... and this digital incarnation, revived through artificial means, may begin innocently enough, but the potential for a black mirror version is ripe for the picking.
If you think a bit more about it, its bone-chilling as the rights to the image and visual depiction of Sridevi, open to an interpretation that she-or her family-would/would not like is a pandora's box that has been opened.
When its respectful and a tribute, sure, perhaps the collective Ayappans/Kapoors/the fervid fanclub would be Ok with it... but as we all know, the internet has a dark side, an amoral abyss filled with infinite unknowable possibilities. What happens when the likeness of an actor is not trademarked or protected from nefarious interests?
All Bollywood stars need a wake-up all; their likeness and legacy is at risk.
There was a time when I'd shoot slings and arrows on Twitter to the false stories that are calcified on the net as the accepted truth, but even I got exhausted. The number of books, blogs, YouTube clips, newsbytes that have engendered falsehoods about Sridevi... how do we reconcile and rectify it? A lie travels the world while the truth is still putting shoes on...
Now that the visual world is now open to such infinite falsehoods, what's coming down the pike?
I don't know what lies [pun intended] ahead....
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