Shriya Saran has become the latest Hindi film actor to describe what it feels like to lose authority over one’s own image. In an interview with News18, the Drishyam 3 actor said AI-morphed explicit pictures have targeted her, altering her body and clothing until she sometimes cannot recognise the result. “Sometimes, I don’t even know if it’s me,” she said, adding that the practice is “annoying and it’s not right.”
What the abuse actually does
Her account underlines a specific harm: AI manipulators change physical features or remove clothing so that the final image has no relationship to the real person. Shriya noted that people sometimes treat these images as humour, but that response does not make the practice less upsetting.
- Real faces are grafted onto bodies the subject never posed for.
- The changes are designed to invite scrutiny of a woman’s body.
- The reaction is often laughter, while the harm is non-consensual.
She acknowledged that AI has legitimate uses, but said the same tools become dangerous when used irresponsibly. “With time, we’ve to either learn to live with it or deal with it,” she said.
The Janhvi Kapoor deepfake and the familiar cycle
Shriya’s comments land amid renewed outrage over an AI-altered clip built from footage of Janhvi Kapoor’s song “Chuttamalle” in Devara: Part 1. The manipulated video added sexually explicit imagery that was not in the original. Janhvi condemned the use of AI as deeply violating and objectifying; Jr NTR, Chiranjeevi and Khushbu Sundar were among those who spoke out.
The pattern is no longer new to Hindi cinema audiences: a clip appears, the performer has to insist that the body on screen is not hers, and the industry issues statements. That burden is falling hardest on women.
Why she connects this to women behind the camera
Shriya, who made her acting debut with Ishtam in 2001, extended the point beyond technology. More women are now deciding which stories get told and where money is placed, she said, but the industry still has a long way to go. A film centred on a woman cannot meaningfully be called female-led if every key creative and financial decision is made by men, she argued.
She put the point plainly: “There are more women behind the camera than in front of it.” The number matters, but so does the kind of authority they hold. Her test is not whether a story is about a woman; it is whether women decide what the story says and whether it gets funded.
That shift is visible in casting and crew lists, but less so in the executive rooms where budgets are cleared. For Hindi cinema’s own record, the deeper issue is familiar: representation on screen has often moved faster than representation in power.
A changing set, and a changing fight
Her memory of early film sets grounds that shift. In her first three films she had no make-up van, and actors sat under trees to eat and discuss books, music and life. Today’s sets are fragmented by earphones; the structure of attention has changed alongside the tools.
That observation does the real work of the story. Whether the question is a deepfake, a song’s visual treatment, or which scripts get financed, the answer keeps returning to who holds the camera and who controls the cut.
Source: The Times of India
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