For aspiring actor Vinayak Vasudeva, the biggest loss from AI isn’t employment, but individuality. Pic/Nimesh Dave

When Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh recently rolled its credits, there weren’t 300 names listed as is typical for a mainstream epic in India, but just 15 to 20.

On one hand, this is a mythic story retold; on the other, it is a new business model. This was a series made via artificial-intelligence-driven workflows, where massive crews are replaced by algorithms and lean teams.

Morgan Stanley Research projects that GenAI can trim overall media-production expenses by about 10 per cent and cut costs in television and film by as much as 30 per cent when the technology will be fully integrated into scripting, pre-visualization and post-production workflows. The question at the heart of this transformation is, is AI poised to become Bollywood’s biggest cost-cutting tool? For some filmmakers, it promises creative liberation, enabling stories without giant budgets. For others, it signals an industrial shake-up of seismic proportions.

This AI-reimagined series has opened the floodgates of a new era, but the real disruption is already unfolding in the backrooms of production studios. Across the globe, AI tools are quietly trimming timelines and budgets. Indian studios, too, are adopting these systems; a 2025 Broadcast and Film industry report estimates that AI could reduce overall production costs by 20–30 per cent by 2026, especially in post-production and set design.

For filmmaker Shakun Batra, who founded the experimental studio Jouska, AI is an invitation to rethink access apart from being a technical shortcut. “For Indian cinema, I think AI opens up a space for risk. We’ve always had incredible storytellers, but access — financial, logistical, or geographic — has been a real barrier. It creates a space where experimenting at scale becomes possible,” he says. His own experiments began out of curiosity but soon evolved into a hybrid workflow model where human storytelling meets algorithmic precision.

In traditional filmmaking, hundreds of people handle lighting, costume, and continuity. With AI-assisted systems, Batra envisions small, agile teams capable of producing near-studio-quality films for a fraction of the cost. The technology, he argues, may finally give independent filmmakers a seat at the table, giving access to what was once an exclusive, capital-heavy industry. Globally, studios are calling it a “business reboot.” In India, it’s beginning to look like a creative revamp.

Pre-visualization that used to take three to four weeks will now be completed in less than five days. Crowd simulations were once considered a logistical nightmare requiring hundreds of extras. Now they will be generated by neural renderers that create lifelike digital bodies, moving, emoting, and even reacting to camera angles. Lighting grids that took an entire crew half a day to set up will now be mapped virtually through AI-led scene design tools like Wonder Dynamics and Runway.

The result is staggering time compression. Where a traditional shoot could span 90 days, AI-assisted workflows are reducing production schedules by up to 40 per cent according to the Broadcast & Film industry report. India’s AI-in-entertainment market is projected to grow at 22 per cent annually through 2030, with potential savings of '70–80 crore on large-scale productions as stated in Pwc’s 2024 Entertainment and Media Outlook.

Batra describes it as “a meeting point between art and algorithm.” His teams run like creative start-ups where AI handles the grunt work, freeing humans to focus on taste, pacing, and emotion. A Rs. 100-crore fantasy once requiring multiple studios and financiers could now be visualized for Rs.. 30 crore or less. And that doesn’t just save money. It redistributes power. The question is no longer who can afford to tell a story, but who dares to.

For all the speed and savings that AI promises, a debate runs beneath the surface about what is lost when technology begins to stand in for the human touch. Actor and director Anshuman Jha, who has spent nearly two decades in cinema, calls AI “a music box pretending to be a violinist.”

“Artificial intelligence may perfect imitations,” he says, “but it can never capture the tremor of a human heartbeat. Breath is at the base of acting where every emotion has a rhythm, every performer a pulse. Replace that with code and the notes may still play, but the soul that wavers between them disappears.”

Jha sees the value in AI-assisted VFX and animation. But to use it to make a film from scratch — devoid of a set, tangible costumes and human faces — is simply a shortcut. “It’s laziness if used 100 per cent to create,” he says. “AI can function off information, but filmmaking is built on knowledge which you earn through experience, not through prompts. In today’s age, you can shoot a film using a mobile phone. Filmmaking is hard work. You can’t find a short cut way out of that.”

Addressing the loss of imagination and sensitivity of a human, Batra comments, “Yes, people will use AI to outsource creativity. But honestly? That’s the laziest way to use these tools. AI can speed things up, yes but that doesn’t mean it brings meaning. That still has to come from the filmmaker. For me, the human touch isn’t just about emotion—it’s about decisions. Why does a scene pause? Why does the silence matter? These are questions AI can’t answer unless we feed it something real to begin with.”

Jha’s critique points to a cultural crossroads. AI filmmaking is undeniably cheaper and faster, but the danger lies in what those efficiencies normalize. A creative process where irregularities like the slight tremor in a voice, the unplanned shadow in a frame, all get edited out in pursuit of polish. As the industry leans toward automation, Jha reiterates that, “at best it is a tool to make the process easier, but it can’t replace the human connect in traditional filmmaking.” In this new cinematic economy, the question is whether the stories will still breathe.

Similarly, the bustle of a set with its tailors stitching, brushes sweeping, fabrics rustling may be replaced by keyboards and prompts. For costume designer Rick Roy, this efficiency carries a cost. “Art has always been a human creative expression of emotions,” he says. “With AI, it’s visual, algorithmic, and devoid of humanness.”

Roy’s concern is anatomical. The way silk moves under studio lights or the quick fix of a safety pin before a take can’t be coded. Yet he’s pragmatic about what comes next. “If AI takes over, we’ll have to adapt. Designers will move from stitching to guiding — learning to teach AI what to create.” The craft, he believes, will survive as long as physical filmmaking does; the designer may just evolve into an AI stylist, a curator of digital texture and silhouette rather than cloth and thread.

Makeup artist Anuradha Raman, a decade into her career, sees a similar fault line. “AI can replicate faces with eerie precision,” she says, “but it loses the rawness that imperfections bring.” For her, makeup brings about emotional scaffolding. “When an actor wears a scar I’ve created, it changes how they perform. AI symmetry doesn’t bring the rawness to one’s character.”

The first revolution in Indian cinema was perhaps the arrival of colour, and the second might just be code. Author Amish Tripathi, who has watched AI transform video game development through his upcoming title Age Of Bhaarat, calls it “the next leap in storytelling logistics.” He’s not talking about automation as replacement, but augmentation. “AI won’t replace creatives,” he says, “but creatives with AI will replace those without it.”

While labour in the film industry may continue to have jobs, each stint will get shorter. For Tripathi, the promise lies in scale. What took game developers two years can now be done in five months. “Your biggest cost is time,” he explains. “If you’re paying people monthly, cutting that timeline changes the entire business.”

In film, that means a writer in Bhopal or a regional director in Kochi could now build an AI-rendered world and walk into a studio meeting with a 20 minute proof-of-concept — a tool once reserved for those with millions in pre-production funds. 

Every technological leap in cinema carries its shadow. AI’s efficiency is rewriting the economics of labour. Actor Vinayak Vasudeva sees the shift as more existential than financial. “Already our mainstream cinema is made for reels. Visuals that are flashy, fast, and give you an easy dopamine,” he says.

“We’re AI’s ideal customers because what actors hesitate to do can now be generated. An item song without paying anyone for it — that’s hard to think about.” For him, the biggest loss from AI isn’t employment, but individuality. “AI can’t bring emotion or human complexity. Acting is built on individuality, which is everything that AI lacks.”

Tripathi compares this to the transition from practical effects to CGI. “There was panic then too. However, with computer graphics coming in, people’s imagination became even bigger. Stories that weren’t even attempted started being made possible.” The same may hold true here. As AI lowers costs, it could multiply the number of films being made. The industry may lose some roles but gain entirely new kinds of creators.

When Shakun Batra looks ahead, he sees not machines replacing artistes, but a new industrial chain forming around them. “We’re already experimenting with hybrid workflows that bring traditional filmmaking and AI together, not as opposites, but as collaborators,” he says. “The hope is to find a balance that’s not just efficient but creatively honest.”

Globally, that vision is already taking shape. Netflix is using AI to forecast content success and tailor thumbnails to viewer emotion; Disney’s virtual production units like StageCraft cut shooting costs by up to a third. India has always been at a disadvantage globally in terms of graphics, and perhaps this will even out the playing field. Indian studios are watching closely. The Broadcast and Film report estimates that AI-driven production could add nearly Rs, 5000 crore to the media economy by 2030, spawning an entire ecosystem of AI designers, creative engineers, and virtual production specialists.

Yet, the irony is picturesque. Mahabharat, a 5,000-year-old tale of gods and men, has become the country’s first AI-made epic. The technology that claims to simulate emotion has retold the story that once defined it.

Spot boy Pinto, who fortunately did not realize that the advent of AI may cost him his job, said, “If there is no work here, we’ll simply go back to our hometown and take up farming.” 

Perhaps the question for India’s film industry isn’t whether AI can make better movies, but whether it can still make us feel. If cinema is the art of human reflection, how much of that humanity are we willing to trade for cost-effectiveness?