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.