Kausar Munir on AI: ‘The human mind, its experience and depth cannot be easily replaced’

Award-winning lyricist Kausar Munir. (Photo courtesy @kausarmunir/Instagram)

That Kausar Munir can peek into the character’s soul that she writes for, first became evident when she penned, Aashiqon mein jiska title Titanic, Muaah kinara dikha kar ke, dooba de gaya… Haaye samjha humne golden jublee jise, Oh woh toh matinee dikha kar ke chumma le gaya, for the brothel madam Chand Bibi (Gauahar Khan) in Ishaqzaade in 2012. And there has been no looking back since. In an exclusive conversation with Moneycontrol, the writer-lyricist talks about her journey, her forthcoming projects, AI and more. Edited excerpts from an interview:

Women should be getting work, and it should not be ‘representation’. I know what that word means, and we have to come a long way to not think of ‘female’ and ‘male’ in any industry. I think we have to reach a point where it goes beyond being token representatives or numbers. Women just like men need to come into the creative industry, music, composing, writing. Of course, there is a requirement of female singers, but there too, I feel that the headlining songs and the main mukhras are usually being given to male voices for the false or perhaps created narratives that those songs go further. But the future is like in any other industry – women need to be encouraged, women need to come into it, it needs to be as natural as anything else. So I have a question mark on the word ‘representation’ itself.

Personally, on the day, you do feel happy and then you move on. But when it was brought to my notice that this was a big deal, I suppose that it becomes two -fold, you feel happy and you feel a responsibility to spread the word.  I feel when we award and reward the hard work and creative talent of a group of people who till then had not been noticed, it becomes a big win for that entire community. I may have been the vehicle and it could have been anybody else but yes it is a good symbol for all women, younger women, who are interested and who want to walk this path. For them it opens a window in your mind that there is this path that has been walked and it can be rewarding.

Again, it's not about female or male. I can just say how cool it is to be a lyricist in the Indian film industry, irrespective of gender. You get to work with different people, different composers, every composer has their own process, directors come with their own way of making the film, every script has its own challenges. To be in this industry is just so cool because you get to tell a part of a story through poetry/song which is in itself really cool. In a way, we composers and lyricists are the hidden rockstars of movies because we are creating the songs. Like any other industry it has its own challenges, but it is per se cool, irrespective of gender. It’s cool to be a woman in any case.

Any new platform or new avenue of the media industry comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Like when video came, radio was a challenge, TV came, cinema was a challenge, so it's challenging for the older form to stay alive. I feel we are now such a broad-based viewership that I feel content on every platform will thrive. Right now, radio is thriving, and cinema this year has shown us that the 2020-21 doomsday scenario, has so wonderfully bounced back. What I like about OTT is that you get to tell stories that you cannot tell in cinema houses because it is linked to distribution, exhibition and what the box office requirements are. So the good part is that we are able to tell diverse, different stories. So much of new talent is given an opportunity whether it is a writer or actors or the new breed of stars. What I feel, we have to guard against, is complacency and mediocrity and not tend to put out work that is second best.

One cannot resist change and one cannot resist the future. AI is now going to be an inherent part and parcel of the future. It will come with its own threats and dangers. But it will also have many things that can be enhanced and will help creative people. There are pitfalls too. Will AI replace writers and composers? I am an optimist, and I don’t feel that the human mind and the human experience and the human depth can be easily replaced by a machine. Similar fears had cropped up when computers came in, machines came in but human intuition, intelligence and emotion will always be most definitely required for content creation, poetic creation, narratives, ideas – that cannot be replaced by AI, by data driven technology.

I am glad that I am in this industry with all its problems and all its ups and downs which are there in any business and in life. It is not easy and comes with its own joys and the gratitude I feel for those joys. I just feel happy that this wasn’t even a career path that I had dreamt of or actively chose. I drifted into it but once I reached there, I realized that it’s a privilege to be here and you have to earn your spot here and keep working hard to keep that spot. It has been said to me as a criticism, but I take it as a complement that I am very attached to the director’s vision. Because I am essentially writing songs for the film. In my career all the beautiful experiences have been where the director has been able to guide me sensitively and patiently into a script and wanted the songs to be a voice of the script.

Right from my first film Ishaqzaade to my latest Jubilee (I just received my second Filmfare for this). Amit Trivedi was the music director for both these films, and it was such a pleasure working for these films, these directors. Especially in Jubilee, I feel extremely fortunate that I was able to be a part of a project where the brief itself was '40s-'50s music. People say that we were able to achieve the thin line between inspiration and imitation and we walked our own path and created our own brand of music. So in terms of actual albums, I mention these two – my first one and now this most recent one.

Apart from lyric writing, I do dialogue and script work also. Last year I did the dialogues of both seasons of Rocket Boys. For 2024 I am doing the dialogue for a big film and lyrics for another film, but I can’t speak about it yet. One of them is with Dharma and one film I am doing with MM Kreem Saab. I am also attached to the Coke Studio Bharat edition which is every exciting work, and I am so happy to be a part of that as a think tank not as a lyricist. So I get to interact with younger musicians, different artistes, folk traditions and people from different parts of the country, speaking diff dialects. It is so humbling, eye opening and so exciting.