The machine doesn’t need a vanity van. It doesn’t demand a percentage of the backend, it doesn’t get jet-lagged, and it definitely doesn't have an ego. That’s the nightmare Abhishek Bachchan is staring at right now.
He recently went on the record to say that AI scares him. He’s not just talking about deepfakes or those weirdly smooth TikTok filters that make everyone look like a plastic doll. He’s talking about the total obsolescence of the human performer. "It should scare every actor," he warned. He’s right, of course. But he’s also a few years late to the funeral.
For a guy like Bachchan—industry royalty, a man whose lineage is literally written into the DNA of Indian cinema—the threat feels personal. It’s one thing to lose a role to a younger, cheaper rival. It’s another thing entirely to lose a role to a mathematical average of your own face. We’re moving into an era where "acting" is becoming a post-production choice. A slider on a screen. More grief, less grief. Shift the eyes three degrees to the left.
The friction here isn’t just philosophical; it’s financial. Look at the math. A top-tier star costs a fortune. Not just the salary, but the insurance, the security, the entourage, and the sheer logistical headache of having a physical human being on a set for twelve hours a day. Compare that to a high-fidelity digital double. Once you’ve paid for the initial 3D scan—a process that’s dropping in price faster than a crypto token in a bear market—the cost of "hiring" that actor for a second, third, or tenth film drops toward zero. You aren’t paying for talent anymore. You’re paying for a license.
Bollywood is particularly vulnerable to this because it’s an industry built on archetypes. We love our icons. We want them to stay young forever. We want them to dance the same way they did in 1998. AI offers that immortality, but it’s a monkey's paw wish. If a studio can license the digital likeness of a legend for a fraction of the cost of a live human, the middle-class actor is cooked. The character actors, the "villain's henchman #3," the background dancers—they’re already being replaced by procedural crowds that don't need lunch breaks or unions.
Bachchan’s fear stems from the loss of the "soul," which is a nice, romantic way of saying he’s worried about losing his leverage. In the old world, the actor held the power because they were the only ones who could deliver the performance. In the new world, the performance is just data. We’ve already seen the Delhi High Court scramble to protect "personality rights" for stars like Amitabh Bachchan and Anil Kapoor. They’re trying to build a legal fortress around their voices, their faces, even their catchphrases. It’s a desperate attempt to stop the tide with a sandcastle.
The trade-off is grim. You get to live forever on screen, but you lose the right to say "no." Imagine a future where a studio owns the rights to your digital twin in perpetuity. They can put you in a propaganda film, a low-rent commercial, or a sequel you would have hated, long after you’re in the ground. Your digital ghost will keep working, making money for a corporation that views your creative output as nothing more than an asset class.
Hollywood went to the mattresses over this during the SAG-AFTRA strike. They fought for protections against "synthetic performers" and forced studios to ask for consent. But contracts can be rewritten. Desperate actors will sign away their digital souls for a paycheck today, not realizing they’re feeding the very engine that will eventually replace them.
The industry likes to pretend this is about "enhancing" creativity. It isn't. It's about margins. It’s about removing the messy, expensive, unpredictable human element from the production line. Bachchan is sounding the alarm, but the house is already half-burnt. We’re heading toward a cinema of the uncanny, where every tear is calculated by an algorithm and every smile is rendered in 8K.
The real question isn't whether AI can act. It’s whether the audience will care that it can’t. If we’re willing to settle for a perfect digital facsimile of a star because it’s familiar and comfortable, then the "scary" future Bachchan is worried about isn't coming. It's already playing in the theater next door.
Who actually owns the twinkle in your eye when the studio owns the code that generated it?