When the Algorithm Takes the Director’s Chair
Twelve years ago, Kundan died on screen but lived on in the hearts of those who watched him. His final moments in Raanjhanaa weren’t just dramatic, they marked the end of a deeply flawed, deeply human journey through love, guilt, and redemption. His death carried the weight of consequence and the grace of letting go. When the lights came on, people didn’t smile. They remembered. Because not all stories are meant to comfort.
But in August 2025, without the consent of the film’s director or its lead actor, Kundan was brought back to life through an AI-generated alternate ending. The Tamil version of Raanjhanaa, titled Ambikapathy, re-entered theatres with a newly imagined “happy” climax in which Kundan survives his gunshot wounds, smiles weakly at Zoya, and rises from his hospital bed as if none of the pain or sacrifice ever happened. This wasn’t the story the creators told, nor the one audiences held onto all these years. It was hollow, built by code, not by vision.
Filmmaker Aanand L. Rai was quick to respond, calling the edit “disturbing” and “a gross violation of trust.” Actor Dhanush, who played Kundan, wrote that the AI-altered climax had “stripped the film of its soul.” Both are now considering legal action. This is not just about artistic disagreement. It is about the sanctity of creative ownership, and the dangerous precedent that gets set when intellectual property is treated like a customizable playlist.
This controversy is a textbook case of what happens when copyright laws, creative control, and technological capabilities collide without alignment. While the production house, Eros International, insists it owns full legal rights to the film and can adapt or alter it as it sees fit, the creators argue that there is more to ownership than paperwork. Copyright might transfer legal authority, but it doesn’t erase the moral and ethical rights of the original artists. The distinction between legal ownership and authorship becomes sharply visible here. You can hold the keys to a house, but that doesn’t make you the architect.
In India, moral rights under Section 57 of the Copyright Act recognize the creator’s right to protect the integrity of their work, even if they no longer own the economic rights. What happened with Ambikapathy raises questions about how those rights are enforced in the face of corporate interests and AI-led edits. If a creator has no legal recourse to stop a company from fundamentally altering the meaning of their work, are we not hollowing out the purpose of intellectual property protections? When the law is on the side of the corporation, but the truth is with the artist, something is broken.
Globally too, AI has already been used to mimic actors’ voices, recreate likenesses, and design entire sequences. It was used to bring a dead actor’s voice back to life in a documentary. Marvel used it to generate the opening titles of a show. The technology is advancing fast, but the ethical conversations are lagging behind. If we’re not careful, art will become a database, and creativity will be reduced to editable templates. AI, used thoughtfully, it can enhance restoration, dubbing, or design. But when it reimagines finished work without consent, it erases intention. What should be craft becomes convenience and the creative process turns into an algorithmic patch job.
That’s what makes the new ending so troubling. Kundan’s death wasn’t optional; it was the heart of the film’s story about obsession, guilt, and loss. Turning it into a romantic twist flattens the narrative and the characters. Art isn’t meant to evolve like app updates. It reflects a moment, a vision, and the people behind it. When we treat it as endlessly editable, we lose both its soul and our respect for those who shaped it. Ambikapathy isn't just a case study. It’s a red flag.
It’s easy to frame this as a debate between art and technology, but that’s not the heart of it. The real issue is that AI lacks the one thing that gives stories their meaning: human memory. It cannot remember the silences between two characters, or the weight of a line delivered with a trembling voice. It cannot feel the ache of a long-held gaze, or the kind of grief that sits with you for days after the credits roll. AI can mimic patterns, but it cannot feel purpose. That purpose comes from creators. From flawed, feeling, frustrated humans who take risks, who fight over final cuts, who live inside their stories for years before sharing them with the world.
That’s why human intervention will always be necessary, not just in the making of art, but in its preservation. Stories are not puzzles to be solved by machines. They are living things, carried by people, remembered differently by everyone, but bound together by the stories they tell. And those stories cannot be edited without consequence. It’s a reminder that in an industry increasingly shaped by data, the compass still needs to be emotional. We cannot lose sight of the human intention that gave a work its shape in the first place. AI may assist. But it cannot, and must not, replace.
So, let Kundan rest. Let creators remain custodians of their vision, even when the ownership has changed hands. Let copyright law evolve not just to protect revenue, but to safeguard meaning. And above all, let stories live and die as they were meant to, not because a machine decided otherwise, but because a human once believed that this was the only way the story could end.