actor Janhvi Kapoor debuted in Telugu cinema with the 2024 film Devara: Part 1, directed by Koratala Siva. Two years later, she found objectionable AI-morphed videos of herself singing Chuttamalle circulating online. When he and his co-star condemned the circulation of the video, as did other personalities from the Telugu film industry, filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma spoke out. He said the focus should have been on catching the culprit rather than increasing the visibility of the video.
Ram Gopal Varma says celebrities have given AI videos more visibility
Without taking Jhanvi’s name he said, RGV wrote in an X (formerly Twitter) post about how celebrities only managed to bring more visibility to AI videos. He wrote, “The only thing in which all the celebrities succeed is in creating publicity and thereby showing the objectionable links to millions of people.”
The filmmaker said the focus should have been on catching the culprit first, writing, “The smart thing would have been to focus on catching the culprit and publicizing it… instead what they did was tweet and identify the victim and draw huge attention to the objectionable content which is also a crime.”
In another
What did Jr NTR and Janhvi Kapoor say?
on friday, Jr NTR condemned those who tampered with the scenes of the song Chuttamalle from Devara, which featured him and Janhvi. “In a land that worships women as mothers and goddesses, where “Matridevo Bhava” is not just a phrase but part of our culture, some people have stooped so low that they are using AI to insult a woman in the most demeaning way. Using AI to create something like this is shameful beyond words,” read a part of their note.
Janhvi addressed the issue in a long note on her Instagram stories on Sunday. She wrote, “Criminal misuse of technology to objectify women and disseminate fictional content without consent is a deep violation, bordering on sexual harassment. Nearly every woman in my industry has faced some version of this, and women everywhere are increasingly becoming its victims.” He also thanked Jr NTR, Chiranjeevi, Vijay Deverakonda and Khushboo Sundar for speaking out against it.
Janhvi wrote, “I hope that whatever is happening around us at the moment will force those who participate in any form of oppression to introspect. Is it really too much for a woman to demand just to be treated and seen as a human being? Her body. Her image. Her boundaries. Her choices.” This year, the actor starred in his second Telugu film Peddi, directed by Buchi Babu Sana and starring Ram Charan. The filmmakers had to face controversy after portraying Janhvi as objectionable in the film.