Filmmaker Arfi Lamba recently experienced the impact of AI while creating a film featuring a family stranded in a cable car high in the Canadian mountains. Due to budget limitations, the team could not travel to Canada, but AI helped create the required visuals. The only overseas footage used in the film was shot in the Italian Alps, where the mountains were digitally enhanced to appear like American and Canadian landscapes.
“The footage was treated like American mountains and Canadian mountains. If we had no AI, the footage would not have worked. We had to fill the mountains with more ice,” Lamba said.
“We shot the entire film in a studio in Mumbai.”
AI-powered visual effects have significantly reduced production expenses. Lamba recalled a project where his friend transformed a modern street in Budapest into a setting resembling the 1930s era using artificial intelligence. The technology cost a fraction of traditional visual effects methods and also eliminated the need for lengthy shooting permission processes.
“In visual effects, doing that work would have cost a minimum of 15,000 to 40,000 euros to clean that set. With AI-powered visual effects, they actually did it for 1,500 euros. This is the amount of work that has gone down. The cost that has gone,” he said.
At his Bombay Berlin Film Production studio, Lamba has been closely observing the decline of certain traditional filmmaking processes. As he expands his production activities, he is focusing on AI-based solutions rather than expensive artist-driven visual effects.
“We are not looking at cost-heavy artist-driven visual effects, because we know that’s not the way we will invest — we’ll never be able to make profit out of that,” he said.
“The visual effects industry is struggling. So many visual effects artists who have done that job earlier and taken that money are out of business.”
AI is also being used for dubbing films into multiple languages, improving assistant director workflows and managing several machine-based production processes. These developments are expected to create further employment challenges in certain areas of filmmaking. However, Lamba believes that essential elements of cinema, including human emotions, unpredictability and imperfections, cannot be replaced by machines.
“There are a couple of films being made totally by AI characters. Their trailers look excellent, but when you watch the film, you get bored within 10 minutes. They start looking the same, they start sounding the same,” he said.
“If people get more dependent on AI, they will lose business. People will move away from them. People are trying to detox a lot from Instagram. All of that is happening because humans crave authenticity.”
The adoption of artificial intelligence in the Indian film industry, particularly Bollywood, the world’s largest film industry, has been developing for several years as filmmakers and major production houses explore new technologies.
According to Ranjit Kumar, who entered Bollywood as an editor around 15 years ago, two major Bollywood studios, Eros International and Jio Studios, have been preparing for AI integration for at least a decade.
“They were well advanced, they were doing their own research, or they were basically prepared for it,” Kumar said.
“Eros International has wrapped up their traditional business from conventional filmmaking and they have shifted to AI wholly. They can see the future where there are possibilities.”
Following these developments, Kumar also upgraded his own skills to remain relevant in the changing industry. He now operates HyperCog Technologies, a startup that develops AI tools designed for filmmaking and aims to reduce production costs and save time.
Kumar told Arab News that the company’s AI product suite is designed to reduce production inefficiencies, human errors, unconscious bias in creative evaluation and the risk of approving unsuitable projects.
“By identifying script inconsistencies, continuity issues, editing inefficiencies and story weaknesses early, our tools help filmmakers avoid mistakes that can lead to expensive production delays, reshoots and budget overruns,” he said.
Kumar added that current AI applications represent only a small part of the technology’s future potential in filmmaking. Most existing solutions focus on automating individual tasks, while filmmaking remains a connected creative and production ecosystem.
He estimated that AI tools could reduce nearly one-third of filmmaking costs as they become more integrated into production workflows and continue to evolve. Kumar said current technology represents only around 10 percent of AI’s overall potential, leaving significant room for future transformation.
“So, 90 percent of the possibilities are still there. That will change the industry in the next five to 10 years,” Kumar said. “When those tools will come into our industry, then you can see a drastic change.”
However, not all industry professionals believe AI will completely transform the fundamentals of filmmaking.
Sudhakar Eklavya, a screenwriter known for his work in Hindi cinema, said the creative foundation of storytelling would continue to depend on human originality and imagination. He believes audiences will continue searching for unique stories rather than generic content.
“A script coming out of the wisdom of a creator is unique and creative. AI lacks that uniqueness. AI can produce good scripts, but it cannot be unique,” he said.
“Now you have many options: you can use a good prompt and can have 20 different scripts for the same scene. If you get a good prompt, AI can give you a good script, but that would not be a great script.”
The growing use of artificial intelligence in Indian cinema signals a major shift in how films are developed, produced and completed. While AI is reducing costs and improving efficiency, filmmakers continue to debate the balance between technological innovation and the human creativity that defines meaningful cinema.
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