AI has already been used on Netflix and Amazon Prime shows, and its use now seems to be extending to the silver screen as well.
Upcoming Tamil movie Jana Nayagan appears to have used Google’s AI products to create its trailer. Eagle-eyed social media users spotted a Google watermark in one of the scenes in the trailer. The trailer of the movie, which features Thalapathy Vijay, has been viewed 34 million times on YouTube in the first 24 hours of its release.
At 0:23 in the official trailer, a Google AI logo appears on the bottom right of the screen, indicating that a Google product such as Veo 3 or Nano Banana was used for that particular shot. The logo appears very briefly, but if one slows down the playback speed to 0.25 around the 0:23 mark, the logo is clearly visibler. It’s unclear if the movie’s makers wanted to leave the logo as it appeared, or it remained there by accident.
Jana Nayagan isn’t the only Indian movie to have used AI. Last year, the Tamil version of the 2013 movie Raanjhanaa had been re-released with a new ending that was created by AI. Amazon Prime Video’s video House of David had extensively used AI for its scenes, and Netflix had said that it had used AI for the first time in one of its shows, when an Argentinian sci-fi show had needed to show a collapsing building. And with a mainstream Indian movie now using AI to create at least parts of a trailer — that was viewed by over 30 million people in 24 hours — it appears that AI is quickly becoming a major part of serious production efforts.