MUMBAI: With the curtains closing on India’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Impact Summit in New Delhi last week, it’s time for a quick look at the strides AI has made in the media and entertainment (M&E) sector. Among the new partnerships announced during the summit was JioHotstar’s tie-up with OpenAI for Chat-GPT-powered voice discovery integrated into the streaming platform, enabling users to find what they want to watch through multilingual cognitive search. The partnership brings personalized AI directly into entertainment and live sports, OpenAI said. On the side lines of the summit, content studio Abundantia Entertainment teamed up its AI-powered storytelling division aiON with global AI video technology leader, Invideo, to launch an AI-driven film production studio. With a corpus of ₹100 crore, it plans to make five AI-driven films over the next three years. AI represents the next inflection point in filmmaking, Vikram Malhotra, CEO of Abundantia Entertainment, said.
New-age media company Collective Artists Network, which operates AI and technology studio Galleri5, is also building advanced AI pipelines for cinematic content. On AI in M&E, Vijay Subramaniam, group CEO of Collective Artists Network said, technology isn’t just a side experiment any more. “There’s recognition that it will become part of national capability, especially in media, language, and storytelling,” he said. The summit was also important to signal that India shouldn’t just consume global AI tools but build systems that understand our languages, mythologies, and scale of production, he added.
For Collective, AI is production infrastructure. “In M&E, the real AI opportunity is in workflow — pre-visualisation, world-building, environment generation, language localisation, continuity, and asset management. These are areas where technology can meaningfully expand what filmmakers can attempt,” Subramaniam said.
Besides AI’s obvious benefits of lower cost and speed of production, “the real contribution is optionality. It allows smaller teams to attempt larger worlds, regional stories to be localised faster and experimentation without committing full-scale production budgets upfront. Basically, with proper tools there is an expansive creative range to be accessed,” he said.
Vijay Seshadri, chief architect, JioStar agreed that AI resets the economics of scale. JioStar’s AI-generated Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh proved that epic storytelling can be mounted at scale at a fraction of the traditional production cycle. “AI unlocks significant value in content creation, supply, consumer engagement and monetization,” Seshadri said.
The deeper transformation lies in disrupting consumer engagement, he said. “We are moving beyond static recommendation engines toward conversational discovery, and contextual interfaces,” Seshadri said, referring to its OpenAI deal. AI’s ability to comprehend India’s diverse languages and dialects is a key capability in driving the new consumer experience, he added. JioStar’s AI focus is evident in the recent appointment of Emmy Award winner Stephan Bugaj, formerly with Pixar Animation Studios, to shape the next chapter in AI-native entertainment. The company did not spell out its future AI slate though.
Collective’s AI studio is currently focused on mythology and historical storytelling because these worlds demand scale — large universes, multiple characters, complex environments. “That said the longer-term slate will not be limited to one genre. The idea is to develop a mix of theatrical, streaming, and potentially short-form projects where technology improves production capabilities. We’re also building tools that other filmmakers can use. So, the slate is both content and infrastructure,” Subramaniam said.
Going forward, M&E could face shortage of AI-native talent, industry backlash over fear of job losses and lack of capital. “There’s a talent gap and people who understand both cinema and technology are still rare. There is also natural resistance which is understandable. After all, film industries are built on human skill and legacy systems, so caution is expected,” Subramaniam said. Technology treated as a shortcut to cut costs will create friction. “If it’s treated as production infrastructure and integrated thoughtfully, then adoption will be smoother,” he added.
But regulation must keep pace. In media, IP clarity is crucial whether it is ownership of data, training material or likeness rights, Subramaniam said. In his keynote address during the India AI Impact Summit, JioStar vice chairman Uday Shankar noted that policy must be an accelerator, not a brake. “Because these are early days, the guardrails we set now will have a massive multiplier effect on our future competitiveness. As we shape these frameworks, we must resist the temptation to import Western regulatory constructs wholesale…,” Shankar said.