Recently, music composer A.R. Rahman tweeted that the song Thimiri Yezhuda from the Tamil film Lal Salaam uses an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software to recreate the voices of singers Bamba Bakya and Shahul Hameed. Bakya died in September 2022 at the age of 42 and has sung songs in films including 2.0 and Bigil. Hameed, who died in 1998, worked extensively on movies such as Gentleman and Kadhalan. Though their voices were used with the permission of their families, who were also compensated, the move has raised a debate among artists about the use of AI. 

Is it ethical to use AI to clone voices for creative purposes? Here we discuss the question.