The Creative Tribe blends AI and live action in Reliance Digital Mother’s Day film

MUMBAI: The Creative Tribe is stepping into the growing world of AI-hybrid filmmaking in Indian advertising with a new Mother’s Day campaign created for Reliance Digital.

The film, titled If Love Had One Name, It Would Be Mom, combines traditional live-action filmmaking with AI-assisted visual production workflows, as brands and agencies increasingly explore how artificial intelligence can reshape advertising production without losing emotional depth.

While the campaign used real actors, costumes, props, hair and makeup during the shoot, AI tools were deployed to support environmental creation, production design extensions, lighting setups and art direction enhancements.

According to the studio, the intention was not to replace conventional filmmaking, but to create an AI-assisted storytelling process that preserves human emotion while improving speed and efficiency. The company said the campaign was completed at less than half the cost of a traditional production of similar scale and delivered on tighter turnaround timelines.

The campaign has also gained strong traction online, crossing 35 million views on Instagram and another 18 million views on YouTube.

Commenting on the approach, The Creative Tribe co-founder Masumeh Makhija said maintaining emotional authenticity was central to the project.

“Audiences can instantly sense emotional dishonesty. Real human performances and emotional truth remain the soul of storytelling. AI helped us enhance the cinematic world around those performances, not replace them,” she said.

Meanwhile, The Creative Tribe co-founder Viral Shah said the hybrid production model is also a response to changing realities in digital advertising, where brands are expected to stay culturally relevant with a constant stream of content despite tighter budgets.

He added that the future of advertising production lies in blending cinematic craft, emotional storytelling, AI-driven efficiencies and scalable production systems.

The studio said it is continuing to build AI-assisted production workflows that can support digital campaigns, performance marketing assets, interactive storytelling formats and high-volume content creation for brands.

As debates around AI’s role in advertising and entertainment continue to evolve, The Creative Tribe is pitching its approach as “AI-assisted cinematic storytelling” rather than fully AI-generated filmmaking, signalling how creative agencies are beginning to redraw the production playbook for India’s advertising industry.