While Hollywood debates the ethical boundaries of artificial intelligence, India’s film industry is already making full use of neural networks for shooting, dubbing, and even rewriting the endings of old movies. It’s not just about technological progress – it’s also a harsh economic necessity.
Since the pandemic, cinema attendance in India has dropped from 1.03 billion (2019) to 832 million (2025). Studios need to cut costs and release content faster. AI has become the solution: producing a mythology or fantasy film now costs five times less, and production time is reduced by a factor of four.
Eros Media World re-released the 2013 hit «Raanjhanaa» – the tragic ending was replaced with a happy one. Audiences appreciated it: ticket sales exceeded the average by 35%.
At the same time, studios are churning out mythology-themed series: an adaptation of the «Mahabharata» garnered 26.5 million views on the JioStar platform. However, its IMDb rating is only 1.4 – viewers complain about unnatural facial expressions and «plastic» gods.
India has 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects – without quality dubbing, you can’t have a national blockbuster. The startup NeuralGarage is solving the problem with AI: a neural network synchronizes lip and jaw movements to any audio track in minutes, preserving the actor’s original expressions.
In the US, actors’ and directors’ unions have blocked many AI use cases: actor consent is required, and creative decisions without consultation are prohibited. India has almost no such restrictions.
Google, Microsoft, and Nvidia are taking advantage of this by collaborating with local filmmakers, providing computing power and video generation tools.
If AI filmmaking becomes the global norm, it will enter the world market not from Hollywood, but from India. The only question is whether audiences in other countries are ready to accept «actorless cinema».
