Filmmaker Vivek Anchalia to release India’s first AI-generated feature film in theatres

(From left) AI-created characters Naisha Bose and Zain Kapoor lead the love story

Last year, when we met filmmaker Vivek Anchalia, he had created an AI character Aisha to front the music video, Cheater saiyaan (Aisha, thoda AI-sa, July 25). Today, Aisha has been rechristened Naisha and leads the eponymous feature film, which Anchalia notes is India's first AI-generated feature. "It's as Bollywood as it gets. First we thought of releasing it on YouTube, but the story felt like it could be put on the big screen," says the director, who is lining it up for a May release.

Naisha explores a love story between Naisha Bose and Zain Kapoor, and plays out across India, France and Switzerland. Anchalia says if this were a live film, he would have needed to spend "at least 20 times more." Instead, with AI software Runway, Kling and Pica Labs, he created six primary AI characters and some locations over eight months. "In the trailer, there are multiple shots of people travelling to different cities and countries. That only happens on a film with a R100 crore [budget]. Here, we are putting out a big film on a limited budget," says the writer-director.

Vivek Anchalia

While Anchalia - who previously helmed Tikdam (2024) - relied on various software to develop most of the visuals, he did voice-acting for Zain's character and used ElevenLabs to process it. "The music is one aspect that is created by humans. Daniel B George composed a few songs," he adds.

The director is excited that Naisha will play out on the big screen. "We are confident of a theatrical release. Some deals have already happened, and ongoing conversations have made us confident that it will be released on a decent scale. We are talking to two-three distributors. From the tech perspective, we're confident because we played it on the big screen and it looked great," he beams.

6
Number of primary characters he created using AI

How he did it

Vivek Anchalia took eight months to create the characters. The writer-director used AI software tools Runway, Kling, and Pica Labs, prompting exactly the kind of features he wanted for each character. "For audio, I relied on ElevenLabs. I combined two or more voices in the software to generate a unique voice for each character," he says.