A Reading Path Down a Rabbit Hole: Prateek Arora

Here are curated interviews and profiles with AI artist Prateek Arora, whose science-fiction-inspired work reimagines Indian characters and scenes.

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[Arora’s use of] AI art platform Midjourney are developing a cult following on Instagram. But it’s not just their lifelike quality that’s garnering attention. Focusing on science fiction-inspired Indian characters and scenes, he’s breaking new ground in a genre that has gone largely unexplored in South Asia.

…his mission to inspire more investment in South Asian sci-fi projects, and, hopefully, show young Indians a wider variety of heroes who look like them.

We’re realizing that the world has always put us in a box, and we want to show who we really are and make ourselves heard.

Midjourney isn’t Arora’s primary form of expression. Rather, it supports his main creative outlet. He’s a screenwriter by trade, and currently works as the head of development for Bang Bang, an Indian production company that’s recently been redefining itself as a global content company, with an overarching goal of “decentralizing Hollywood” and bringing South Asian stories to the global stage.

Homegrown

So I guess I’m trying to ‘culture hack’ in a way by using AI imaging tools to create mood-boards for Indian sci-fi and horror movies that I wish existed.

As a screenwriter operating in genres that are relatively under-explored in India, it’s always been a challenge to pitch – this was honestly one of the reasons I began experimenting with AI imaging in the first place.

Grazia

It’s an important genre, especially since we are a country with so many young, ambitious people. If you can see the future, maybe you can create it too. It’s a phenomenon that we’ve seen happen in the US. Lots of tech CEOs often cite sci-fi films as the reason they became entrepreneurs. More broadly, it fosters a culture where we actively talk and think about the future and how to get there. That said, science fiction is also a great way to make sense of our present, given that life around us is being reshaped every day by incredible and often disruptive scientific leaps and consumer technologies.

Over time, this has led to a very incorrect assumption among people who fund and produce content that sci-fi isn’t a desi genre, it doesn’t work in India. I’m trying to challenge that. I’m trying to imagine – what if we had a Bollywood disco sci-fi film in the 80s? So I used AI imaging to create images from Disco Antriksh, a movie that doesn’t really exist. The reactions so far have been quite interesting. I got so many DMs asking if it was a real movie, and where to stream it.