Somy Ali, the actress known for Anth, Teesra Kaun? and Krishna Avtaar, has drawn a sharp line on artificial intelligence: the technology is not the disease, she says, but its misuse has become the wound. Speaking through her NGO No More Tears, which supports survivors of abuse and exploitation, Ali argues that the conversation around digital safety can no longer be confined to celebrity scandals.
Her warning is direct. The gap between what AI can do and what ordinary people can use has collapsed. “The gap between ‘possible’ and ‘everyday’ has closed,” she says, pointing out that a stolen video and a few minutes can place a woman in a situation she never consented to. The real danger, in her view, is speed: objectionable content can travel far before the person involved even knows her image has been misused.
Where satire ends and abuse begins
Ali, who has spent time inside the film industry, says public figures have long accepted that their images get used, edited and caricatured. Political cartoons and tasteful caricature, she notes, belong to democratic expression. What she refuses to accept is the use of a face to fabricate illegal, sexual or humiliating acts.
“A still from a movie on a wall is not the same as a lie that can destroy a private person,” she says. The line, for Ali, is consent—and it must be drawn when technology is used to create criminal or degrading content.
The ease is the real problem
Ali is careful not to label artificial intelligence as inherently evil. Instead, she argues that the technology has advanced faster than the safeguards around it. “The tool is not innocent. The ease is the wound,” she says. Accessibility, not the algorithm itself, is what has made misuse so hard to contain.
That framing carries a message for platforms. She believes social media companies cannot escape responsibility when harmful deepfake content goes viral: they hold the accounts, files and timestamps involved, and they must act quickly when non-consensual or illegal material is reported. Viewers, too, are part of the chain. “The person who shares is not a spectator. Forwarding is participation,” she says.
Audiences can protect without being experts
Her advice for viewers is practical rather than technical. No one needs to become a digital forensic expert, she argues. The real check is a pause:
- Is the video satire or a fabricated act?
- Did the person shown actually consent?
- Who could be harmed if this is shared?
“Verification is not cold. It is protection,” she says. In a feed built for speed, that pause is the individual counterpart to platform accountability.
The other side of the AI coin
Ali also sees a constructive role for the same technology. Through No More Tears, she points to online assistance in multiple languages that could let survivors seek help privately, at a time they feel safe, without having to physically walk into a support centre or authorities. AI, in that sense, can be both a threat and a tool for social change.
For an industry now experimenting with AI in filmmaking—restoring old films, planning scenes, creating content with limited resources—she is not calling for a ban. Creative freedom, she insists, cannot come at the cost of another person’s dignity or consent.
Her larger message is about who technology serves. “At No More Tears, we are not anti-AI. We are anti-abandonment,” she says. She wants the same systems that generate convincing faces to also generate safer spaces for people who need help: “Let the same country that can generate a face also generate a door – one that opens at night.”
The takeaway for Bollywood fans and content consumers is simple: technology is accelerating faster than the rules around it, and everyone—platforms, viewers, filmmakers—holds a piece of the responsibility. The first move is not more tools, but more pause.
Source: Filmibeat