AI can cut costs but not replace emotions, asserts industry

Artificial intelligence seems to have become both the muse and the menace of India’s advertising world. While generative tools promise faster turnarounds and creative scale, they also raise questions about craft, cost, and credibility. 

For an industry that runs on ideas and instincts, the sudden algorithmic intervention is forcing everyone - from directors to creative officers to strategists, to reimagine the economics of storytelling.

Read e4m report on brands slashing ad production costs

Ram Madhvani, the award-winning filmmaker and co-founder of Equinox Films, believes AI is part of a larger continuum of technological liberation. “The word technology comes from techne, which means art. All technology is meant to liberate art,” he says. For him, new tools, whether vertical video, digital cameras, or AI, should expand creative vocabulary, not merely trim budgets. Madhvani, who recently explored virtual reality filmmaking through Equinox Virtual, admits he hasn’t released a fully AI-generated commercial yet, but calls the use of AI “an enhancement rather than a replacement.” 

As for Neville Shah, Chief Creative Officer at FCB Kinnect, the myth of AI being “cheap” is misplaced. “Good AI is not cheap,” he stresses. “It’s costly for the planet, and for the producer.” Shah points out that hybrid productions, part live-action, part AI; are often more expensive because blending the two demands more time, iteration, and skilled labour.”

Read e4m report on brands and emotions

In Madhvani’s view, production cost still begins with one question - “How much do you have?” The tools are chosen backward from that number. A film like his iconic Palace ad, he notes, “looked like a big-budget film but was 30-40 per cent cheaper than standard budgets at that time.” AI, he argues, may shift workflows but not the fundamental creative economics: “We are here because we’ve been very careful about not spending clients’ money in a bad way.”

From a media-strategy lens, Deepshikha Bhardwaj, National Lead - Media Strategy at Schbang, offers a pragmatic number: AI has trimmed average production time drastically but reduced overall budgets by only 15-20 per cent. “Earlier it took two to three days to create dubs or multiple edits; now it takes two to three hours,” she says. “So, yes, it saves effort and time, but it isn’t drastically cheaper because subscriptions, software, and specialised operators add cost.” For complete AI-only ads, like recent experiments featuring Farah Khan or Gautam Gambhir, Bhardwaj estimates costs can fall by 50-60 per cent, but admits “the human angle is still missing.” AI works best, she adds, for topical or short-form content where turnaround matters more than emotional resonance.

Read e4m deep dive on AI redefining consumer engagement

Sharing insights from his experiences, Shah said: “We’ve done AI film production work, and we know the trauma it takes to get to a quality where you can say, ‘Okay, put it out.’ Last year we struggled for a one-minute film; this year it’s easier, but still not cheap.” He adds that many multinational clients’ legal teams don’t even allow full-AI ads yet due to unresolved copyright and personality-rights laws.

For Shah, AI’s value today lies in pre-production, pitch decks, references, and short social assets, rather than in emotional, narrative-led campaigns. “If there is no empathy, how can it become creative?” 

Industry data backs the caution. According to a 2025 report by GroupM India, nearly 18 percent of new digital ad assets use some form of generative-AI assistance, yet total ad-film budgets have only decreased by about 8 percent year-on-year. The Indian advertising industry, valued at ₹1.1 lakh crore by Pitch Madison 2025, continues to grow 10 percent annually despite the AI influx. Agencies are spending less on shoots but more on software, cloud render time, and AI supervision, flattening the savings curve. Meanwhile, legal and ethical frameworks around likeness rights, from Karan Johar to Amitabh Bachchan, are prompting caution; most brands still pair AI augmentation with human approval.

Creatively, all three experts converge on one truth: AI can accelerate craft but cannot yet replace emotion. Madhvani calls fear “a good thing”, the queasy gut feeling that signals creative risk. Shah warns that the “myth of convenience” can dilute ideas. Bhardwaj reminds that “audiences are smart enough to know when brands haven’t put in the effort.” The consensus, then, is nuanced: AI is not slashing budgets as dramatically as expected. It’s redistributing them, trading camera cranes for compute power, travel for templates, and time for immediacy.

As Indian advertising enters this next technological wave, the question may not be whether AI makes films cheaper, but whether it makes them better.