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Shriya Saran reacts to AI misuse following Janhvi Kapoor condemning an explicit morphed video. She calls this practice ‘annoying’ but also notes that one has to deal with it.
Shriya Saran’s Drishyam 3: The Conclusion starring Ajay Devgn and Tabu has crossed the Rs 300 crore mark in India.
Recently, Janhvi Kapoor condemned an AI-altered video of her song Chuttamalle from Devara: Part 1. The video, which went viral, digitally manipulated her appearance to create sexually explicit imagery that was never a part of the original song. She slammed the ‘criminal misuse’ of AI to objectify women and called the video ‘deeply violating’ and ‘bordering on sexual assault’.
The incident once again raised AI misuse concerns, leading members of the film fraternity such as Jr NTR, Chiranjeevi and Khushbu Sundar taking a firm stand against the violation. Speaking exclusively to News18, Shriya Saran, who has also been a victim of AI abuse leading to the creation of morphed images of her, reacts to the issue that has become rampant.
She points out that more often than note, it’s the women, who bear the brunt, as their body parts become a talking point on the internet. “It’s funny. Sometimes, I don’t even know if it’s me. They change the size of your b**s, suddenly the cape that you were wearing is gone or your a* looks bigger. You’ve to take it with a pinch of salt. Having said that, it’s annoying and it’s not right,” she states.
“While AI has a lot to give us and a lot to help us with, there’s also a lot it can change for us. It can lead to things that can be dangerous. I think that applies to every technology. With time, we’ve to either learn to live with it or deal with it,” she adds. With AI becoming part of an actor’s life, Shriya notes that ‘a lot of other things’ have changed too from the time she made her debut in 2001 with Ishtam.
“We didn’t have make-up vans. I didn’t have one in my first three films. We would find a tree and sit under it and have our lunches together. It was beautiful in a way. The positive side is that I still remember my conversations with some of my co-actors and directors. We used to sit together and discuss life and books. Hum recorder laya karte the aur sab saath mein music sunte the,” she says.
“Now, everyone has earphones and you don’t even know what the other person is listening to. Cinema has changed a lot. The style of srytelling has changed a lot,” she continues. But the most significant change, Shriya believes, is the growing presence of women in decision-making roles on film sets. “There are more women behind the camera than in front of it,” she points out.
The Drishyam and RRR actor adds, “There are women deciding the kind of story that needs to be told and what they should put money in. You can make as many women-oriented stories as you want but if the people behind the camera are all men, you can’t really label them as a female-led film. We’ve a very long way to go but change has begun.”
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Ask News18Shriya Saran slammed the rampant misuse of AI to create explicit morphed images, noting that women frequently bear the brunt as their body parts are altered and objectified online. She described the issue as annoying and wrong while emphasizing that society must learn to live with or deal with emerging technology.
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Titas Chowdhury is a Special Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringi…Read More
October 13, 2026, 08:30 IST