IFFI 2022: AR Rahman and Shekhar Kapur talk virtual tech, metaverse

New Delhi: Machines can never replace human creativity and technology should be in humankind's service were the biggest takeaways from a heavyweight panel looking to the future of content at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), Goa, reports 'Variety'.

The panel, according to 'Variety', was devised and led by Shekhar Kapur (his long-awaited 'What's Love Got to Do With It?' is the Red Sea Film Festival opener) and the participants included Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman, Ronald Menzel, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Dreamscape Immersive, and tech maven Pranav Mistry, formerly CEO and president of Samsung Technology and Advanced Research, who joined via video link.

The panelists discussed the concept of the metaverse, which is still in its nascency. Mistry envisaged a future powered by VR, AR and AI where the audience participated in an MCU movie and solved world problems. Rahman spoke about the process of creating his VR project 'Le Musk', which premiered at Cannes earlier this year and is now touring the world.

When asked by Kapur if he could ever be replaced by AI, Rahman said that he is himself a product of evolution over several distinct career phases; from the early 1990s to the years after winning the Oscar, to the present day. "I am the AI," Rahman said, in a reference to the technology's evolutionary learning capabilities.

"What VR is doing is taking me on a journey outside myself. When I watched a film like '2001: A Space Odyssey', I watched it 18 times -- it's so beautiful," said Kapur, according to 'Variety'.

He added: "Because each time I am in a different stage of my life and each time it is taking me on a journey somewhere else. So great movies, great compositions that we hear, again and again, are doing something to us that is more than just listening to music. It is taking us on what we call a completely virtual journey. And often what technology is trying to do is to create a virtual journey to replace our senses."