Will filmmakers' AI bet pay off as Bollywood struggles?

On a rainy November evening, Mumbai's Royal Opera House teemed with 20-somethings grabbing snacks, dodging a drenched Rolls-Royce, and posing with a humanoid robot strutting along the red carpet.

- Prasannata Patwa & Soumya Gupta

Producers are turning to AI to slash both costs and timelines, with multiple large-scale projects now in the pipeline.

The occasion was Mumbai's first ever 'AI Film Festival', where teams of young creatives from across India (and even abroad) flew in to participate in a ‘hackathon’, making short films using generative AI tools, to be judged by a panel of entertainment professionals.

Creator Tanmay Bhat was a part of the jury, as were Hindi film directors Karan Anshu-man and Shakun Batra. Just days earlier, the event had generated much dismay on social media; many film critics and enthusiasts rued that in the very year Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI) Film Festival went missing, the city was hosting an AI film fest.

At the festival, headed by a clutch of startup enthusiasts from Bengaluru and sponsored by Peak XV-backed artificial intelligence-powered video-creation firm InVideo, several entries were awarded for storytelling, cinematography, and a ‘Best Overall Film’.