MUMBAI: Hindi cinema has never been shy of new technology, but it has always insisted on keeping the camera, the actor and the story firmly in charge. Yash Raj Films and Google are now testing whether artificial intelligence can join that hierarchy without upending it. The two are co-hosting an ai filmmaking workshop for India’s filmmaking and creative community on 4th August at YRF Studios in Mumbai, and the choice of venue alone signals how seriously both sides are taking the experiment.
The session will give production and creative professionals hands-on training on Flow, Google’s ai creative studio, with a clear brief: fold ai into existing production workflows as a storytelling companion rather than a replacement. Participants will learn to use the tool while retaining full creative control over their craft, a distinction the organisers are keen to stress. It is also, notably, one of the first times Google’s Flow team has been brought directly into a major international studio’s production and creative leadership, a signal that Google sees Indian cinema as fertile ground for this technology, not just a market to sell into.
Akshaye Widhani, chief executive officer at Yash Raj Films, framed the collaboration as a deliberate act of control rather than a rush to keep pace. “Every generation of filmmakers inherits new tools, and every generation has to decide whether the tool serves the story or starts dictating it,” he said. “We’re choosing to have that conversation early and on our terms, in the room with the people building this technology. This session is about giving our filmmakers and creative teams the judgment to use ai deliberately, so that craft stays firmly in human hands, and the camera, the actor, and the story remain where they’ve always belonged, at the centre.”
Arathi Sethumadhavan, director, user experience research, technology and society at Google, was equally upbeat about the momentum building around the tool in India. “We are already seeing incredible momentum with Google Flow in India,” she said. “Through this workshop, we’re excited to bring our ai creative studio to even more creators across the country, and see how these legendary storytellers use the technology to challenge boundaries of artistic expression.”
The ambitions stretch beyond a single masterclass. Google and YRF are positioning the workshop as a launchpad for sustained dialogue with India’s leading storytellers, complete with networking opportunities alongside Google’s core ai engineering and product teams, and optional deep-dive modules for filmmakers ready to put Flow to work on live projects. The long game, evidently, is to see how far world-class Indian creatives can push these tools, potentially unlocking entirely new narrative forms and giving Indian cinema a sharper edge on the global stage.
It is a savvy move for both sides. Google gets a foothold with one of India’s most influential studios and a direct line to the country’s creative establishment, while Yash Raj Films gets first-mover credibility in an industry still working out where it stands on ai. Neither party is pretending this technology isn’t coming. The bet, instead, is that shaping how it arrives beats waiting to react to it.
