Singer S.P. Kalyan Charan, son of late legendary singer S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, who passed away due to Covid-19 related complications in 2020, on Friday, February 16, 2024, said that he had issued a legal notice to producers of the Telugu film Keedaa Cola and the film’s music director Vivek Sagar, for “inappropriately” recreating Mr. Balasubrahmanyam’s voice through Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deepfake technology.
In a press release, Mr. Charan said: “While we really love how technology is used to its fullest potential to give his voice a posthumous life, the family is disheartened when the same technology is utilised without our knowledge, consent, or authorisation for commercial exploitation”.
This fact, he said, was admitted by the music director himself in his interview to a YouTube channel and Spotify page ‘Permit Room’ published on November 28, 2023. “This shocked us for two reasons, firstly because no consent or permission was taken from us to use/artificially mimic the legend’s voice for commercial exploitation, secondly: if this trend of using AI technology for commercial exploitation in entertainment industry continues without valid consent or permission then even the present and future singers who are valuable resource to the music industry and whose livelihood depends on their only asset, their voice, will be at peril.”
