Collective Artists Network is scaling up its AI content ambitions, with the company planning to release a new AI-led title every month starting next month and continuing through June or July next year, according to Founder and Group CEO Vijay Subramaniam.
Subramaniam said the group has already built a sizeable AI studio and is producing content at scale, even as it continues to retain writers, directors and production designers at the centre of the creative process.
“We are making more AI content than anyone else in the country and, I would argue, in this part of the world,” Subramaniam told Storyboard18.
“Our AI studio is extremely large and we are planning to release a title every month starting next month and going up to June or July next year,” he said.
For Collective, however, the AI play is less about replacing creative talent and more about changing the cost and speed at which content can be produced.
“Every title still has a director, a writer and a production designer. The heads of department are similar to those on an animation film,” Subramaniam said.
“What AI changes is speed and economics. It allows people to produce things faster and at economics that otherwise would not have allowed those projects to exist.”
He described AI as a new production medium rather than a replacement for the creative process.
“AI is a medium. It is not creation,” he said. “You still need creative minds behind it. You cannot make the Mahabharata without a writer or a director. You cannot simply prompt a complete script out of GPT and assume the creative job is done.”
The AI push comes as Collective looks to expand the range of creators and IP it can take across social media, streaming and eventually theatrical formats.
Subramaniam believes India’s creator economy is still in its first phase, arguing that talk of consolidation may be premature.
“I don’t think there is one way of consolidating it because we are still in phase one of the creator economy,” he said.
India, he said, was historically dominated by Bollywood and cricket as the two major engines of popular culture, while the creator economy has emerged largely in the post-Covid period.
“We have a fair degree of growth ahead of us before we get to consolidation,” Subramaniam said.
One factor behind that growth, according to him, is the large section of the Indian population that is yet to come online.
“There are still more than 400 million people in India waiting to get onto the internet. The number of people in India who are not online is itself greater than the population of the United States,” he said.
“So there is a lot more coming. We have barely scratched the surface.”
Collective is also trying to build a pipeline of creators much earlier in their careers through Under 25, its youth and campus network.
Subramaniam said the platform conducted more than 200 summits last year, giving the company access to thousands of potential creators.
“We did more than 200 summits last year and every summit has student talent showcasing what they do. That gives us access to roughly 3,000-4,000 creators just through these campuses,” he said.
For Subramaniam, the definition of a creator itself is also widening.
“A creator is not always an influencer,” he said.
He cited TVF founder Arunabh Kumar and Bhuvan Bam as examples of creators who have built businesses and production ecosystems around their creative identities.
“The barrier to entry into the top tier of recognisable people of influence in India has come down. You don’t necessarily need to be based in Mumbai. You don’t need lineage,” Subramaniam said.
“You can sit in Haryana, Jabalpur or Coimbatore and still have a voice.”
Collective’s broader strategy is therefore to see whether creators who have built audiences on one platform can be moved into larger entertainment formats.
“What we are trying to do with our creator ecosystem is see whether creators can break out of their existing platforms,” he said.
“Can they grow beyond Instagram? Can they grow beyond YouTube? Can Collective eventually mount them on theatrical screens or platforms such as Netflix, Amazon or Disney?”
Subramaniam said the company has already seen “a fair degree of success” across these areas.
He attributed the opportunity partly to a structural change in entertainment consumption following the pandemic.
“Post-pandemic, viewing patterns have changed for good. Predictability has become very difficult. You don’t know what will break through,” he said.
“The basic constructs of creating content have changed irreversibly.”
Earlier, he said, the market was split between large-scale productions on one end and social media content on the other, leaving fewer opportunities for formats in between.
“The middle and smaller formats had almost disappeared. Now we are finding new voices across the board,” he said.
That thinking is also informing Collective’s plans for Terribly Tiny Tales, which it acquired as part of its move towards communities and owned IP.
Subramaniam said one reason for the acquisition was the need to bring fresh storytelling voices into an entertainment market where he believed fatigue had started setting in.
“I saw very clear fatigue setting into storytelling in the existing movie and content businesses. We needed fresh voices and newer voices to break through,” he said.
He expects TTT to eventually operate on a much larger canvas and said Collective is also preparing a theatrical project with the company.
“We are also planning a theatrical project with TTT very soon. These are increasingly going to be large IP plays for us where we own the content,” he said.
But the larger strategy remains on creating an ecosystem where creators, technology and distribution can work across formats rather than remain tied to one platform.
“The creator economy will dovetail with the growth of the internet,” Subramaniam said. “Anyone with a phone and an internet connection can potentially become a creator.”