The arrival of artificial intelligence in cinema has not just opened new creative frontiers, but it has also unsettled the foundations of how stories are conceived, shaped, and shared.
From generating hyper-realistic sequences that once demanded months of location scouting, elaborate sets, and sprawling crews, to assisting in script revisions within hours, AI is rapidly altering the grammar of filmmaking.
In one recent experiment, filmmaker Shakun Batra worked with a team of collaborators to explore how AI could function in this area. The project, structured as a series of short visual pieces across genres—from action and drama to sci-fi and comedy—was designed to test whether advanced tools like video-generation and AI-assisted editing could help filmmakers imagine scenes that were previously limited by budget or logistics.
Batra, known for his intimate yet layered narratives through his previous work, such as Gehraiyaan, which Deepika Padukone and Siddhant Chaturvedi helmed, recently created a whole car chase sequence entirely through AI.
“We were able to explore scale, energy, and movement in a way that would have required months of planning and a massive crew otherwise,” he says. “But what stayed with me wasn’t just the visual achievement—it was the shift in process. We were working more like composers or designers—quickly iterating ideas, testing pace and mood in near real-time.”
The first experiment in the series, a high-octane chase titled The Getaway Car, gave him the chance to try something he had never attempted before. “For many independent artists, it can be challenging to produce such ambitious, dynamic concepts due to logistical and budget constraints,” he notes. “This is where technology can step in to open new avenues for visualising and iterating complex ideas.
Rough edges and all, it was one of the most freeing creative experiences I’ve had. It’s not perfect, but it’s a glimpse of what’s possible when curiosity leads the way,” Batra tells THE WEEK in an interview.
Script writer and conceptualiser, Shruti Srivastava, agrees. “It’s a complete burst of ideas and concepts that AI leads to, which makes it so exciting to work with. As filmmakers, I think we are just about starting on exploring the many possibilities that we will see in the time to come,” she says.
For Batra, the promise of AI lies not only in efficiency but in its potential to democratise the medium. “As the tools become more accessible, I feel like those of us with experience need to step into more of a guiding role,” he notes. “Access is step one. But making something meaningful still takes intent, and perhaps part of our responsibility is helping others develop that sense of intent in this new landscape.”
Filmmakers of today view AI less as a threat to artistic integrity and more as a way to rethink the creative process. If used right, AI doesn’t reduce creativity; it liberates it. While the tools generate visuals, it’s the filmmaker’s choices that give them meaning. “In a world of endless generation, the artist’s role in curating what matters becomes even more important. Even a student in a small town, with a story and a vision, can now produce sequences that used to require studio-scale resources,” adds Srivastava.
AI’s presence in the industry has also forced conversations around authorship, ethics, and credit. If a director uses an AI tool trained on thousands of hours of another artist’s work, who owns the final image? Batra doesn’t pretend to have definitive answers. “These are big questions—who gets credit, who gets paid, what does authorship even mean now? If someone’s voice or visual style helped train a model, shouldn’t they be acknowledged? We need frameworks that are transparent and fair.”
Looking ahead, industry experts believe that the most urgent debate is not technical but philosophical. “Just because we can make things faster or bigger doesn’t mean we should stop asking: what are we really trying to say? And who gets to say it?” says Nachiket Nanda, who’s learning filmmaking with AI in a mass communication college in Mumbai.
Interestingly, AI can analyse audience preferences, simulate locations, or even generate first drafts of scripts. The challenge then for the industry will not just be mastering the technology but mastering how to live with it. Or, as Batra puts it, “We need to make sure we’re not just making more movies, but making movies that still matter.”
