At the film's Los Angeles premiere, the director said artificial intelligence only adjusts lip movement for dubbed versions, not the voices themselves.
Nitesh Tiwari didn't wait for the question to spiral. At the Los Angeles premiere of Ramayana: Part 1 on October 27, the director sat down with international media and drew a hard line on where AI fits into his mythological epic.
"As far as AI is being concerned, it is only being used to get the lip sync," Tiwari said. "So that we can present the film to the world in their language. So all the voices are dubbed by the artists. There is no AI out there. AI is only being used to get the lip movement right so that audience can enjoy it in their native language."
The clarification was prompted by the film's English-language trailer, which had viewers debating whether the oddly precise lip movements meant something synthetic was going on. Bollywood Mascot reported that this exact discussion had been building online for days before Tiwari addressed it in LA. A clip of him explaining the process spread fast once it went up.
The distinction matters because "AI dubbing" gets used loosely to describe very different things, voice cloning, synthetic speech, automated lip movement. Producer Namit Malhotra has previously walked through the actual workflow, according to Bollywood Mascot: voice artists record dialogue in the target language, human specialists work out the correct lip timing, and a bespoke AI-assisted process then fits that translated performance onto the actor's face on screen. Human performance first, technology second, is the pitch.
A premiere built for the world stage
The LA event wasn't just a press briefing. Ranbir Kapoor, Sai Pallavi, Yash and Malhotra were all present, alongside exclusive footage and a staging built around traditional Indian aesthetics, part of a promotional push clearly aimed at audiences well beyond India.
Ramayana: Part 1, also referred to as Rise of a Legend in some markets, has Kapoor playing Ram, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana. Sunny Deol plays Hanuman, Ravi Dubey is Laxman, and the cast also includes Arun Govil, Lara Dutta and Rakul Preet Singh. Namit Malhotra's Prime Focus Studios has produced it with Monster Mind Creations, DNEG handles the visual effects, A.R. Rahman has composed the music, and Hans Zimmer has written an original score alongside him.
The film opens worldwide on November 5 in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, with the international dubbed versions carrying the AI-assisted lip sync Tiwari has now explained twice. It's billed as the first of a two-part adaptation, with the second film slated for later.
Whether that lip-sync technology reads as cleanly or as a little too smooth is something audiences will only really settle once they're sitting in a theatre on November 5, watching Ravana speak in a language that wasn't the one it was shot in.
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