Indian film studios are reportedly using AI to slash production time and cut costs — building the moviemaking future that Hollywood is trying to prevent.
While union contracts restrict American studios’ use of AI, Indian cinema is racing ahead, reshaping the economics of filmmaking and compressing production timelines, according to a report by Reuters.
The Collective Artists Network, a Bollywood A-lister talent agency — which has brokered the careers of real-life superstars — is now generating digital ones in its Bengaluru office, using AI to create content popular in India, which produces the most movies of any country.
“AI is slashing production costs to one-fifth of what they used to be for traditional filmmaking in genres such as mythology and fantasy,” Rahul Regulapati, who heads the talent agency’s AI studio — called Galleri5 — said.
When it comes to production time, Regulapati told Reuters it’s been slashed “down to a quarter.”
Shifting audience habits, which involve the rise of streaming, are tightening production budgets, industry insiders told the outlet.
Last year, the number of moviegoers fell to 832 million from 1.03 billion in 2019, according to consulting firm Ormax Media.
Studios in India have responded by deploying artificial intelligence at a scale that hasn’t been seen anywhere else, even producing entire AI-generated films.
India has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects throughout the country, which makes dubbing crucial for any movie to become a national hit. Audiences, meanwhile, have long complained about mismatched lip movement.
This is a problem that Indian film studios are hoping to solve with the use of artificial intelligence.
Subhabrata Debnath, the co-founder of an AI startup that provides dubbing for top studios, told Reuters that AI preserves “the performance, identity and the speaking style of the person” while altering the face enough to make the dubbing look natural.
Indian film studios are also using the technology to recut the endings of old movies — raking in additional sales.
In one example, the 2013 hit Raanjhanaa was re-released after using AI to replace the film’s tragic ending — in which the protagonist dies — with a happier finale where he opens his eyes to see his lover, who smiles at him through tears.
While the rewrite garnered backlash, the AI-altered movie still pulled in audiences, with one studio now reviewing its 3,000-title catalog “to identify candidates for AI-assisted adaptation,” Reuters reported.
Over a moderate period of time, artificial intelligence could boost Indian media and entertainment firms’ revenue by 10 percent and reduce costs by 15 percent, according to the consulting firm EY.
Vikram Malhotra, founder of Abundantia Entertainment, told Reuters that the Bollywood production house is currently building its AI capability from scratch, expecting content generated or assisted by the technology to account for one-third of its revenue within three years.
Big tech companies, meanwhile, reportedly want in on the action, as Google partnered with Bollywood director Shakun Batra last summer to create a cinematic series using its Veo 3 video-generation and Flow AI tools.
Collective Artists Network has also been working with Microsoft, telling Reuters that the software giant is providing AI computing power to help “shape the next wave of global storytelling.”
But Hollywood is unable to embrace AI in the same ways India has, due to union agreements and fears of job displacement.
The Screen Actors Guild currently prohibits U.S. studios from digitally altering an actor’s performance or creating replicas without the star’s informed consent, while the Directors Guild of America bars studios from using AI for creative decisions without consulting the director.
Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap, however, told Reuters he is concerned about the growth of AI in India’s filmmaking, as well as the lack of guardrails — but reluctantly conceded the economic case for studios using the technology.
“In India, cinema isn’t about art. It’s purely business, so studios are going to use it to make mythologicals,” Kashyap said of AI. “Our audience is a sucker for it.”
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
