When Mahabharat Lost Its Soul to AI

Published on 20 November 2025 | Category: Technology

I did something very brave last night.

I tried watching the new AI-generated Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh on JioHotstar, produced by Collective Media Network (a division of Collective Artists Network).

And I survived… for about 20 minutes.

After that, my neurons filed an HR complaint.

You see, this wasn't just inspired by AI.
This was AI. No actors. No expressions. Just fake and slow motion algorithmic enlightenment.

Every character looked like they were halfway through buffering. Brahma had all the charisma of a frozen Teams call and Ganga's expressions were so still that even a stone idol might've looked more emotionally available.

Now, I get it.
Technology is amazing.
AI can write poems, paint portraits, even flirt (badly) in your DMs.

But there's a difference between "Can we do it?" and "Should we?" and somewhere in a meeting room, someone clearly said:

"Guys, what if we remake Mahabharat, but… fire the humans?"

The result?
A digital dharmayudh where pixels fight pixels, and no one wins.

Watching it felt like someone tried to feed ChatGPT the entire Bhagavad Gita and it responded with:

"Generating… inner peace.exe"

Here's the irony: Mahabharat was about emotion, ego, dharma, and humanity.
This one had none of that.

It's like trying to recreate "Sholay" using Excel formulas.

Technically possible (It is). Spiritually criminal.

AI is brilliant when it assists creativity. But when it tries to replace creativity, it just exposes how little it understands why humans create in the first place.

You can train a model to generate Arjun's face, but you can't train it to feel his doubt.

So here's my humble request to all future AI-enthusiast producers out there:

PLEASE. Step away from the epics.

[Edit: Collective Media Network's next disaster is Chiranjeevi Hanuman – The Eternal.]

Let's start with something easier, like Sasural Simar Ka: The Neural Network Edition.

Because if Mahabharat has taught us anything, it's that even the gods couldn't automate dharma.