A photo was posted on the Internet on July 25, 2025. It is a shot of Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, with Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman in the office of Perplexity. According to sources, the two talked about AI-driven project Rahman and his secret mountain, and a virtual global band project developed in collaboration with the OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman. The plan is to merge cross-cultural music and AI-strengthened narration. The gathering indicates the strengthening of the connection between AI startups and creative industries. When successful, Secret Mountain may change the rules of music composition, sharing, and generating income in a world context.
Secret Mountain Brings AI-Enhanced Storytelling to Global Music
The project of A.R. Rahman called the Secret Mountain aims at the creation of a virtual band. With the influence of storytelling, music, and AI as a cross-genre and cross-cultural medium. That becomes safe and captivating on one platform. A brief animation clip as a teaser was released in February 2024. It leverages digital avatars driven by the Unreal Engine and MetaHumans by offering its performance in a fantastic narrative frame. The idea entails a fictional character, Luna, in search of a magical world. Where musical characters exist in different parts of the world.
The July 2025 encounter between Rahman and Sam Altman of OpenAI cemented the mission of the project. To express AI not only as a concept of automation. But also as a means of facilitating new forms of creative association. As explained by CEO Aravind Srinivas, the visit of Rahman to the office of Perplexity AI raises the prospect that the firm can contribute to the project and perhaps enable it via such offerings as the Perplexity AI Comet browser, which is supposed to include such functions as real-time AI search and AI-driven creativity generative capabilities.
AI Could Boost Creativity, But Trust and Adoption Remain Hurdles
While “Secret Mountain” represents a leap in how music might be made, the use of AI in creative industries comes with both excitement and concern. A study published in Nature Communications in 2023 revealed that AI would enable a 30 percent increase in the speed of music composition so that composers could create more in shorter periods. The efficiency of this game changer for composers and producers comes at a cost of demanding difficult questions, which will AI creativity submerge human originality? Is it possible to be emotionally true in synthetic writings?
Rahman has not set AI as an alternative but as an ally, as an assistant to human intuition, and not as a substitute. However, such an initiative cannot be a success until it is taken by musicians, technologists, and audiences. It may hit some sore spots in the form of privacy, ownership, and cultural sensitivity, particularly in cases linked to AI-generated views of regional music forms.
By aligning with figures like Altman and Srinivas, Rahman appears focused on building an ecosystem of accountability and access. But public trust and regulatory clarity will be crucial as “Secret Mountain” aims to go global and inspire a new generation of creators.
Secret Mountain Signals a New Era of Music Innovation
The meeting between Aravind Srinivas and A.R. Rahman offers more than just a photo. It reflects a larger shift where AI becomes a co-creator in the arts. The mix of storytelling, worldly sounds, and machine learning is unified in one experimental platform, which is called Secret Mountain. In case of success, it may transform the way music is being created, shared, and performed. Putting a rich cultural vision of Rahman together with the experts in AI, such as Altman and Srinivas. The project becomes an indication of the future of not only the digital world of music but also an intelligent, collaborative, and unbounded one.
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