80s AI Photo Trend Sweeps Telugu States, Tollywood Joins In
HYDERABAD: Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy became the first sitting Chief Minister in the country to embrace the trend, sharing a ChatGPT-generated image of himself styled in a brown blazer and wide-collared shirt, leaning against a vintage motorcycle, with a caption referencing the 80s wave. The image quickly gained traction online, with several users noting it was the first time a serving CM had personally taken part in the viral format.
Rajya Sabha MP and senior Congress leader Renuka Chowdhury took a different approach to the trend. Rather than generating an AI image, she shared an original photograph of herself from the 1980s that had appeared on the cover of the English magazine Savvy, noting she had no need for artificial recreation when the real thing was available.
Tollywood’s biggest names have been at the centre of the trend’s Telugu-states footprint. Megastar Chiranjeevi, Nandamuri Balakrishna, Daggubati Venkatesh and actor Meena have all shared AI-generated retro portraits of themselves, drawing significant engagement from fans. Director Anil Ravipudi also joined in, while director Meher Ramesh’s throwback image alongside Pawan Kalyan, captioned to suggest the actor’s enduring star status, went viral shortly after being posted.
The trend has extended to a wider circle of Tollywood stars as well, with AI-generated portraits depicting Prabhas, Gopichand, Mahesh Babu, Pawan Kalyan, Ram Charan and Jr NTR as college friends from the 1980s circulating widely online. The images, styled with period-accurate fashion, vintage scooters, Ambassador cars and studio-style backdrops, have been praised for their visual authenticity rather than looking like a simple filter overlay.
Beyond individual posts, the craze has also found its way into film promotions. Chiranjeevi’s upcoming film Kaka rolled out a poster redesigned in the retro 80s aesthetic to align with the trend, while the Venkatesh and Kalyan Ram starrer January 12 Vidudala followed suit with its own throwback-styled poster, positioning both releases within the ongoing cultural moment.
The AI prompt behind the trend typically asks the tool to preserve the user’s face, face shape, skin tone and expressions while replacing clothing, hairstyle and accessories with authentic 1980s fashion. Users are instructed to request analog lighting, visible film grain, slightly faded colours and soft focus, while explicitly removing modern elements such as smartphones, contemporary vehicles and present-day clothing, so the final image resembles an actual photograph taken in the 1980s rather than a filtered version of a current one.
While no Telangana or Andhra Pradesh IAS or IPS officer has been reported joining this specific trend so far, its spread across the state’s political and film circles — led by a sitting Chief Minister and reinforced by Tollywood’s top stars — reflects how quickly AI-driven visual trends are being absorbed into mainstream public and celebrity culture in the Telugu states.
