Beyond the Backlash: What Do We Do About AI in Ramadan TV?

When the film industry in Hollywood came to a halt due to the writers strike in 2023, the dispute wasn’t only about pay. The Writers Guild of America strike was the first major standoff between creatives and studios over the use of AI. Writers didn’t push against AI altogether, but rather against it replacing them. AI was welcomed as long as it assisted, integrated, and enhanced.

Over the past week, a similar wave of backlash arrived on the shores of the Egyptian TV industry, as Ramadan TV enthusiasts were enraged by the widespread, uncredited use of AI in opening credits, a use that producer Hady Moamer suggested extends to the theme music itself, hinting at uncredited use of the generative audio tool, Suno.

The conversation has dominated social media feeds for days now, drawing takes from casual buffs and working filmmakers alike, as four Egyptian TV series have been caught using AI to create their opening credits.

Behind a thick curtain of moral panic, woven from accusations of AI being the latest nail in the coffin of a rapidly decaying industry – more nuanced takes are starting to emerge, less panicked and more determined to have a clear-eyed debate around not the if and whether, but the why and how surrounding AI use in TV and film. A conversation slowly shifting from moral absolutism to finding a realistic balance that acknowledges the business aspect of art and culture without undermining their spiritual core.

And balance begins with asking the right questions.

One of the most troubling aspects of AI use this Ramadan season has to be the lack of transparency.

The opening credits in question were not announced as AI-generated; they were recognized. If artificial intelligence is simply another tool, why not openly credit it as such? The hesitation to disclose suggests either uncertainty about audience reception or a lack of confidence in the outcome.

Owning the choice would have reframed the debate entirely. But the studios that made this creative decision chose to ignore the debate unfolding around them, and that silence, by default, weakened their stance. Studios need to step into the conversation, address the film community directly, and actively participate in the discourse instead of carrying on as though the controversy does not exist.

Transparency should not stop at whether AI was used, but extend to the why and how. Was it used as a creative decision or a financial one? Was it experimentation or cost-cutting? If budgets were indeed reduced by replacing a team of designers and animators with a smaller AI unit, where did that saved money go? Did it elevate another department within the production, or was it simply an exercise in minimization?

These are not accusations, but structural questions – and addressing them is an essential gesture of respect for the industry’s ecosystem and the professionals who sustain it.

Opening credits can be symptomatic of a larger phenomenon, but they are important on their own merit. Ramadan intros function as more than aesthetic preludes, with their theme songs circulating independently and serving as ambassadors for the show in the midst of the pop culture arena, turning their visuals into something akin to a music video and an advert, a hybrid that we have come to anticipate every year.

Opening credits are also a show’s first impression, and hence its first test of approval. Choosing the easy way out in crafting an intro risks misrepresenting the show from the very first frame, creating an atmosphere of shortcuts and half-assed creative choices that does the opposite of whetting the appetite. We’re already hearing fans online say that they decided to skip a show due to the AI intro. Amidst a highly competitive TV season, this can easily turn into a shot in the foot.

Yet, looking closely at these online debates, one can notice that more often than not, this reaction is not necessarily a rejection of AI itself. It is a rejection of visible laziness. Because AI is not a substitute for taste. It amplifies the vision – or the lack thereof – behind the prompt. When creative direction is strong, AI can become an extension of imagination. When it is weak, AI merely exposes it.

The Human Question

One of the core debates that unfold around new technologies has to do with how they threaten to push humans out of certain junctures in the creative process. And as one team stands vehemently by human creatives while the other repeats dogma about the inevitability of technological progress, the answer often lies somewhere in the middle.

Opening credits have historically been an entry point for emerging visual talent, a space where experimentation thrives and where young creatives build portfolios that propel them into larger roles. If that layer is quietly replaced, the long-term impact is not just aesthetic, it is, sadly, generational. Removing such spaces risks thinning the creative pipeline itself.

This evolution also raises another vital concern: homogenization. Artificial intelligence models, unlike human creators, are trained on largely overlapping, vast datasets. The more the industry relies on similar tools trained on similar visual references, the more aesthetics risk converging into a shared, algorithmic soup. Ramadan TV is already burdened with recurring thematic tropes; the danger lies in technological reinforcement of sameness, where distinct series begin to feel visually interchangeable.

And then looms the broader horizon of “where to go from here?” AI-generated theme songs? Full screenplays? Music scores? Color grading? These things, as Hady Moamer previously mentioned, might already be underway.

In recent years, many have voiced concerns about declining precision in screenwriting – hasty production schedules and visible shortcuts. There have been cases where series began airing while their final episodes were still unwritten, and continued shooting well into Ramadan. In that climate, anxiety around automation does not emerge in isolation. It intersects with an existing atmosphere of speed-over-substance production, where AI tools can become a normalized go-to for last-minute solutions aimed at wrapping things up before the season starts.

The evaluation of this matter should not, by any means, focus solely on ethics. It should focus on quality, execution, and governance. Other creative industries globally are already drafting guidelines on AI usage, clarifying disclosure, authorship, and labor considerations. Is the Egyptian television industry prepared to have that conversation?

There is also a longer-term question of audience conditioning. Today, viewers can immediately detect AI patterns – the smoothness, the glitches, the repeated transitions, the synthetic rhythm. But what happens when they no longer can? If the technology improves to the point where detection becomes irrelevant, does the concern disappear? Or does normalization gradually lower the collective bar of expectation? Cultural standards rarely collapse overnight; they erode quietly.

In a climate where budgetary cuts can make AI use a necessity, not a creative choice, guardrails and guidelines can go a long way in making sure this use doesn’t necessitate a visible, flagrant drop in quality. AI intros can and should follow a clear narrative, thematic, and stylistic intention – not a random prompt resulting in artists playing chess or standing on a chessboard, a theme that we have embarrassingly seen twice this season. If studios find themselves with no option but to compress labor, this shouldn’t come with a side order of compressed imagination as well.

So, to close in a John Oliver style: what can we do now about this? We already have something to celebrate, the fact that these four intros didn’t simply pass by, but triggered a society-wide backlash and resulted in soft boycott campaigns, or at least sentiments, toward the shows that don’t honor their viewers. Keeping this debate alive is crucial to generate enough pressure to force the industry into a response, to crack open the black box within which AI has operated this season, and to start having a nuanced conversation that seeks to acknowledge both our high expectations for this TV season and the strained realities that its producers have to work through.