Music composer AR Rahman on Friday launched his metahumans project, a global musical band consisting of six dynamic virtual musicians that represent people and cultures around the world, in Dubai at the ‘Abundance For The Future by SWFI’ event. The musical maestro will provide content and creative direction to this band, whose members will be represented by Synthetic Avatars. Rahman and the band will blend the best of both worlds i.e., real and virtual by using state-of-the-art technologies, including visual effects and motion capture.

Rahman’s band aspires to integrate cultures and remove boundaries and divisiveness, promoting humanity as one. This project is supported by The HBAR Foundation, a leading web3 ecosystem fund. Other technology partners who will be joining in this journey will be announced soon.

AR Rahman Uses AI To Recreate Late Singer’s Voice

Recently Rahman used AI software to recreate the voices of late singers Bamba Bakya and Shahul Hameed for a track in veteran actor Rajinikanth’s new film ‘Lal Salaam’. This sparked a controversy where people weighed in with their opinions on whether this was right or unethical or cheating. 

While stating his stance on the matter, Rahman said his team had taken permission from the families of Bakya and Hameed to recreate their voices for the song. He added that fair compensation had also been given to their families as fees for the project. 

He tweeted, “We took permission from their families and sent deserving remuneration for using their voice algorithms ..technology is not a threat and a nuisance if we use it right…#respect #nostalgia.”

Bakya, who crooned popular numbers such as the latest ‘Ponni Nadhi’ in Mani Ratnam’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’, died in September 2022 at the age of 42. He had also sung the tracks ‘Pullinangal’ from Rajinikanth’s ‘2.0’, ‘Kalame Kalame’ from Vijay’s ‘Bigil’ and ‘Simtarangaran’ from ‘Sarkar’.