AI beckons Bollywood: Abu Dhabi-based G42 seeks to add tech edge to movie creatives

Bollywood - representative image

From smart movies to smarter making of movies - that's the script artificial intelligence is set to write for Bollywood.

Abu Dhabi-based tech giant G42 is trying to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into film production across a wide spectrum - from automated dubbing by replicating the voices of actors in multiple languages to assisting with scriptwriting, plot development, editing, and post-production. On its part, Bollywood weighs leveraging the technology to gain a sharper edge in its creatives.

“We recently met with a major production house, and they wanted to use AI to dub films in the actual voice of actors, like Shah Rukh Khan or Akshay Kumar, in languages such as Tamil or Telugu,” said Manu Jain, CEO of G42 India, said in an interaction with Moneycontrol. “They are essentially looking for AI-driven dubbing that maintains the true voice of the actor.”

G42, which developed the world’s largest AI supercomputer Condor Galaxy, and launched Jais, the first open-source Arabic language model, looks to bring its AI expertise into India’s vibrant film industry. According to Jain, the collaboration would allow Bollywood to personalise and scale content production, making it more accessible to India’s vast, multilingual audience.

Another production house, Jain noted, is interested in using AI to streamline various production tasks, from scheduling and script formatting to workflow management. “They want AI to automate these processes,” he said.

G42 is also preparing to launch its Hindi Large Language Model (LLM), Nanda, in India. It's a 13-billion-parameter model trained on 2.13 trillion tokens and designed to cater specifically to Hindi language applications, with further customisation planned for film-related use cases.

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma has already embraced AI, announcing plans to use AI-generated music exclusively in his projects through his venture, RGV Den Music, including the soundtrack of his upcoming film, Saree.

This shift reflects a larger trend of AI adoption in creative industries, where its potential to automate and enhance complex processes is met with both excitement and caution. Hollywood, too, is exploring AI, with Warner Bros using Cinelytic for data analytics and Disney’s 20th Century Studios experimenting with AI for story development. Streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are leveraging AI dubbing to broaden their global reach.

Some industry veterans, however, remain cautious. Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan, for example, has noted that while AI offers valuable tools, it cannot substitute the human intuition that underpins authentic artistic expression.

G42 has set up a local team in India to support its collaboration with Bollywood, working closely with its subsidiary Inception. “A large number of people who work at Inception are Indians, so we’re connecting them with the G42 India team for technical evaluation of potential use cases,” Jain shared.

As part of its plan to localise Nanda, G42 is collaborating with leading Indian research institutions such as IITs and IISc. The company is working with IIT Chennai’s AI4Bharat to access open-source data and adapt Nanda for Indian languages and contexts. Jain added that G42 is open to partnerships with additional universities to fine-tune the model.