Indian entertainment giant JioStar names its first senior VP for generative AI
JioStar Group in India has appointed Stephan Bugaj as its first senior VP of generative AI content and technology as it looks to use the controversial tech in areas including storytelling.
The group owns JioHotstar, which was formed last year by the merger of JioCinema and Disney+ Hotstar, one of the world’s largest subscription streaming platforms with over 300 million users across India.
Bugaj has joined the company to create “AI-native, next-generation experiences,” using his experience of co-developing the Massively Interactive Live Event format, which merged streaming, gaming and live audience participation.
Previously chief creative officer at Genvid Entertainment, he has been tasked with helping the company to “build intelligent content pipelines, interactive storytelling formats and scalable creative frameworks that enable faster experimentation, richer audience engagement and shape the future of entertainment globally.”
Bugaj has also built AI-native creative pipelines and tools for filmmakers and, as creator-showrunner, led the development of interactive storytelling productions.
With over 30 years of experience, he has held senior creative and technology leadership roles at DJ2 Entertainment, Pixar Animation Studios, Telltale Games and Hanson Robotics.
JioStar Group is already investing in AI-powered features across its content businesses, including conversational interfaces, second-screen engagement layers and AI-assisted content workflows.
The company said it expects the addition of Bugaj to “further accelerate innovation across next-generation experiences and interactive formats designed for digital-first audiences at scale.”
At a press conference towards the end of last year, JioHotstar execs discussed its budding experiments with generative AI, as seen in its controversial series Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, which is based on Indian mythology.
The project, made up of hundreds of episodes a few minutes long, launched at the end of October, with JioHotstar pitching it as the “first ever premium entertainment series fully powered by AI.”
It told a mythological story based on the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata and was part of Mumbai-based producer Collective Media Network’s Historyverse strategy to bring Indian mythology to audiences online using AI.
JioHotstar said the series garnered 6.5 million video views within days of its launch. However, the show received a largely negative response online, with one of the top comments about the show’s official trailer on YouTube, which received over 2,600 likes, stating: “We Don’t Want Fully AI Based Films…Especially Mahabharat…”
Many were critical of JioHotstar’s use of AI to tell stories from Indian mythology, which are drawn from the Hindu religion and explain its beliefs and customs through tales of gods, goddesses and heroes.
JioHotstar said the show “has set the blueprint for AI-driven content where technology doesn’t replace creativity but amplifies it, enabling creators to imagine storytelling and characters beyond conventional limits.”
Moreover, it reflects its “commitment to shaping the next era of entertainment, where machine intelligence empowers human creativity shaping the next leap in storytelling innovation.”
It comes as an increasing number of Indian companies use AI in their production processes, with Vikram Malhotra’s Abundantia Entertainment in India last year launching a division dedicated to creating, developing and producing stories powered by AI.
Krishnan Kutty, JioHotstar’s head of entertainment for South India, said: “With regards to AI-generated content, we were so excited by what the creators were able to do on Mahabharat. What we are really figuring out, and committi
