Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the buzzword in content generation in the creative space globally over the last few years, with many welcoming the technological evolution while a large section is understandably skeptical, given risks like job displacement, manipulation of people, loss of privacy through surveillance and so on.
At the front and centre of India’s AI renaissance in the content generation space has been Vijay Subramaniam, founder & group CEO of Collective Artists Network, which has taken the leap from becoming one of India’s leading talent management companies to an AI-driven studio that is taking momentous steps in integrating AI extensively into content creation, developing projects like AI-powered content: Chiranjeevi Hanuman: The Eternal (which will be India’s first wholly engineered theatrical film) and Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh (streaming on JioHotstar). The company has also propelled “virtual influencers” as well the AI rock band Trilok. With India poised for an AI leap in the content creation space and Subramaniam — who refers to himself as a “growth keeda” — leading the charge, t2 chatted with him to know more.
What has the past year been like for you in terms of moments, milestones and, of course, challenges?
I wear my heart on my sleeve, and it was a personal setback that spurred a lot of what we achieved in 2025. I lost my mother in April and thereon, the work that I did led to what Collective Artists Network is in its present form — the only AI movie studio in the world which is seeded in spirituality and Indianness. Year 2025 was my most innovative as a founder... we took some big swings in various aspects of the business. We launched India’s first AI show, Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, on JioHotstar. We announced an AI film (Chiranjeevi Hanuman: The Eternal). Our content studio Terribly Tiny Tales produced Greater Kalesh, which went to the top of the charts on Netflix instantly. We greenlit a few shows and launched a “spiritual rock band” called Trilok. Year 2025 philosophically started the growth of Collective Artists Network 2.0. I joke that the fiddler on the roof is my mother who is making all these things happen. We have embarked on a very interesting journey and I feel gratified.
Was there a specific moment or instance that mandated this large-scale jump to AI?
AI has always been at the top of my mind. That is why we acquired Galleri5 (the AI mar-tech arm of the company) a few years ago. I like to keep an eye on bet-worthy trades, in terms of what is going to be big in the world in the next two-three years, and I usually advance my punch. I always knew that for the economics of the industry, cost of content has to come down, volume of content has to go up and visual scale has to keep improving. India is a market with only 9,000-10,000 screens, which is very less compared to that in China or any other country in the West. Hence, in this market, one needs to be clear about the content-to-commerce equation.
I am a big believer in AI, I am a pro-evolution person. I feel that AI is the new Internet. It is not something to be fought. You have to treat it as a friend. There was not one single moment of epiphany, but the birth of Trilok started everything that we are now doing in the ‘Historyverse’ (a digital platform for mythological/historical stories).
What makes you feel that the audience is now ready for large-scale AI-generated content? The industry, in general, remains resistant to it...
Any new technology which challenges the incumbent will always meet with resistance. When internal combustion engine and automobiles came in, chariots went out of work. Computers did the same with the typewriter. Netflix vs cinemas is the same story, as is e-commerce vs the dying footfall in retail. When there is any new technology that challenges the status quo, it is always going to be met with resistance within the industry.
At the same time, historically, we have had consumers who were happy that they could move faster in a car, that they didn’t need a postal service but could simply email. Today, in 10 minutes, you can get any item delivered to your doorstep. For us, the consumer is God, we are all here in service of the consumer. Honestly, I am not a sucker for peer pressure. If I was, we would have just remained a traditional talent management company. Good, bad or ugly... the annals of pop culture will say Mahabharat was the first in its vertical, that Hanuman will be the first Indian theatrical release in AI, that Terribly Tiny Tales is telling stories about relationships or that our consumer fund is backing startups and young venture brands. I don’t think you create impact with concurrence and populism, you create impact by disruption... and disruption is never easy within the trade.
The chief fear with AI, and justifiably so, is that it will take away jobs and kill human touch and creativity. But for Mahabharat, I believe you employed a lot of human talent and even created new jobs. How important is it for you to retain the human factor even in an AI ecosystem?
In Mahabharat, the only people whose jobs were taken away were the actors, but that has also always happened in animation. On this project, we had 30 engineers at work and employed a brand-new editing force. The director, Lavanya, is a first-time director who is just 23 and would have perhaps taken 20 more years to get to direct a project of this stature if things went the traditional way. The background musicians are new and the creative and post-production team has been hired as well. We may not have had casting directors, but how is that different from Frozen or The Lion King or Aladdin or any of what Pixar, DreamWorks or other large animation studios do?
People are looking at this in the wrong way. They are hating AI in the way they hated social media when it came in, but look how it blew up. The whole aspect of losing jobs is a moot point. You can say that the light man will lose his job, but he also did that when animation films came in. Studio rentals came down even there.
AI is just another medium. Honestly, audiences don’t care whether it is real-life or AI-generated as along as they get to see a good story that engages them. Even with AI, if the work is not done well, people will shun it. They may come in for the sheen and the excitement, but will not stay if it doesn’t interest them. You can’t bank storytelling on the basis of technology. You have to bank it on the basis of connection with the audience, which only a human touch can do. The writing on Mahabharat is by real people, there is a writers’ room of eight-nine people who write the show week on week.
AI is so new for us that most people don’t understand it. Most think that we enter a prompt into ChatGPT and generate content. But even when we use AI, there are teams of people propelling it. We have an engineering team and an R&D team working tirelessly. There is pipeline building, 3D modelling, VFX composting... it is very complicated. You are not getting this out by just going to a platform and saying: “Bhishma Pitamaha fighting Draupadi... please generate.” That is not how it works.
What are the firsts that you are hoping to come up with in your theatrical AI film Chiranjeevi Hanuman – The Eternal?
This will be the first time one will get to see a 4K AI-enabled human-created film. We are, of course, following the holy scriptures and not deviating from it. This is also a rare film which focuses on Hanuman completely. In live-action films, one has always seen Hanuman as a character in Ramayan. The new film focuses on his superpowers, his vulnerability and his journey towards becoming Hanuman. It is a lovely, heartwrenching story directed Rajesh Mapuskar, who is a National Award winner.
What is in store in ‘Historyverse’ over the next few years?
The thing about AI is that it keeps evolving at a very brisk pace and it is almost impossible to predict what the next big step will be. Right now, we are trying to build an ecosystem and once that is done, we will know what to do next. It will be more on the lines of that one “eureka” moment in the middle of the night like I got with Trilok. We have the tech, we have the stack... it is now about figuring out which way and how deep the rivers will run.
Globally, what kind of work in AI content creation in the recent past has impressed you?
I don’t think there has been that much done in the content creation world yet. AI is sector agnostic and the work happening in pharma, in software and in data science is where we are using a lot of our data capabilities.
At Galleri5, we have developed a social intelligence tool to clearly forecast trends from a consumer’s point of view as well as a content standpoint and that will be important for us going forward.