A.R. Rahman

A.R. Rahman (born 1967 in Chennai) redefined Indian film music from “Roja” (1992) onward, winning two Academy Awards and two Grammys for “Slumdog Millionaire” (2008) and earning the nickname “the Mozart of Madras.” A lifelong studio technologist, he has treated each new tool — samplers, synths, now AI — as an instrument to be mastered rather than feared.

Resurrecting voices, with consent

For the Rajinikanth film “Lal Salaam” (2024), Rahman used AI voice models to recreate two late playback singers — Bamba Bakya, who died in 2022, and Shahul Hameed, who died in 1997 — on the track “Thimiri Yezhuda.” When the move drew criticism, he explained on X in January 2024 that the families had granted permission and been paid “deserving remuneration for using their voice algorithms,” adding that technology “is not a threat and a nuisance if we use it right.” It was among the first officially sanctioned uses of AI to revive deceased singers in a major film score.

The bigger evil

Rahman is no cheerleader: he has told interviewers that AI in music “will hurt musicians,” that a tune still needs a “human heart and philosophical mind,” and that uncompensated style mimicry is an ethical failure the industry must confront. But his answer to those risks has been to model responsible use — consent, credit, payment — rather than abstention, and he continues to build AI-inflected projects like his virtual-band venture Secret Mountain.