We're building a newsroom that's not afraid to play with technology

The ₹1,100 crore India Today Group, including the ₹990 crore TV Today Network, has been using artificial intelligence (AI) in its newsrooms for over two years now. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar spoke with vice-chairperson KALLI PURIE at her office in Noida. Edited excerpts:

- KALLI PURIE

What's behind the launch of AI pop stars Aishan and Ruh?

Nilanjan (Das, group creative director) is our main AI guy. He is always experimenting, sending me AI music. That's where the A-pop idea came. We put these two pop stars together and launched them on our radio station (Ishq) without any explanation. We revealed it at the India Today Conclave (March 2025). Music Today (the group's music label) is about Ustad's and legends. This allows us to revive the brand in a different way.

Were you looking at doing something like this?

We have been looking at AI for two years.

In 2023, we launched Sana, an AI anchor. She was on the 9 pm show with Sudhir (Chaudhary, former editor Aaj Tak) for a while. She's done interviews with Shah Rukh Khan, Kriti Sanon et al and brand endorsements with Samsung, Motorola, etc. At the 2023 G20 summit, she did the bulletins in 12 languages (English, Hindi, French, German, Italian, Japanese, among others). We tried using her to do regular headlines.