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Talking to TechGraph, Gurleen Khurana, Co-founder of SimplifyGenAI, discussed how the growing adoption of generative AI is encouraging brands to look beyond content production and place greater emphasis on originality and long-term brand storytelling, and how this evolution is shifting the focus from producing content more efficiently to developing creative ideas that stand out in an increasingly AI-driven market.
Khurana further discussed how AI studios are emerging alongside these changing expectations, bringing together creative strategy and production as brands increasingly seek partners who can contribute beyond execution and support the broader creative process.
Read the interview in detail:
TechGraph: Content production has traditionally been one of the largest line items in a marketing budget, particularly for brands that rely on frequent campaigns and platform-specific creatives. As GenAI starts reducing both production timelines and costs, are brands becoming more ambitious with content, or are they simply trying to do the same work more efficiently?
Gurleen Khurana: I mean, honestly, it depends on the kind of brand we are talking about. The higher-ticket ones, like real estate, are using AI more for efficiency. They want one emotional brand film at the top and then some kind of walkthrough video at the bottom, and that’s pretty much it.
They don’t want to bring in Hollywood-level CGI because it does them no good, right? Their client is someone who is buying a house, so if you do something too out of the box, the whole messaging gets lost. So they stay grounded. But the D2C brands, it’s the opposite.
For them, creativity is the only limitation, because what they are doing is basically selling a dream, and now with AI they can make visuals that people actually dream of. So those guys are being very ambitious. Same tool, but it totally depends on who you are selling to.
TechGraph: Brands today are expected to create content across an expanding mix of platforms, formats, and audience segments, often while working within the same budget constraints. Has GenAI fundamentally changed expectations around content volume, and how are brands adapting to this new reality?
Gurleen Khurana: Not really the way people think. The brands are still kind of conservative on social; they don’t want to bombard their audience with too much content, so that part hasn’t changed much.
Where we have actually noticed the volume go up is in the ads. Like for Meta ads, earlier a brand would run one creative or two creatives; now they are testing ten, fifteen different creatives, because AI lets them make so many for cheap.
So now they can find the winning creative, the one that is actually helping them grow the business, without putting a hundred posts on their feed. So it’s not more content everywhere; it’s more options where it actually matters.
TechGraph: For years, high-quality content was closely tied to large production budgets, lengthy timelines, and specialised creative resources. As SimplifyGenAI works with brands adopting AI-driven workflows, what changes are you seeing in the way organisations think about the relationship between cost, speed, and creative output?
Gurleen Khurana: See, the speed part is real; stuff that used to take months is now done in weeks, no doubt. But on cost, people have a wrong idea. Everyone has access to the same tools now, so the tool is not really the value.
The value is the person, someone who can visualise it, script it, direct it, do the art direction, talk to the client, all of that. So a lot of us are still charging close to traditional video rates, because that human part didn’t go anywhere; that became the actual job. What has gone away is you don’t need a whole VFX or CGI team anymore.
Now you just need one person who can see the dream, and then a good execution partner who can build that for you at a fraction of the time, fraction of the cost, fraction of the budget.
TechGraph: The emergence of AI studios has sparked conversations about whether they could become the new production houses of the digital era. Do you see SimplifyGenAI as a natural extension of the traditional production model, or does this represent the formation of an entirely new category within the creative ecosystem?
Gurleen Khurana: I believe it’s a completely new category. Earlier, the production houses each one used to specialise in only one thing. One would do CGI films, one would do 2D animation, one would do live action, and you had to go to different vendors for different things.
But a studio like ours, we can do all of these kinds of artwork because of AI. So now the client doesn’t have to deal with five vendors; they just come to one partner who understands the domain and understands how this actually helps them in sales and marketing. And that is the real thing, right?
A lot of people can use the tools, but very few have the domain expertise to look at a brand and figure out, okay, this story will land better in 2D, or this one needs live action, and then actually direct it. That combination- doing multiple styles plus knowing what sells- that’s the new category.
TechGraph: Every major shift in content production has created winners and losers across the ecosystem. As AI studios gain traction, which parts of the traditional production landscape are most vulnerable to disruption, and which areas do you believe will become even more valuable?
Gurleen Khurana: The studios whose job was just to make the content, the ones doing CGI, 2D, 3D, but not the visualising or scripting or directing, those guys are definitely going to get disrupted. There’s no way around it. What stays valuable is the person who has the vision, who can actually visualise, who has that artistic eye, that taste. Because taste is one thing AI just doesn’t have; for that you need a human.
Same with scripting: to land those emotional beats, to ideate something that actually makes sense and connects with people, AI is still not good at that. So you will always need a human in the loop who can be creative, who can write, who can direct. That part only becomes more valuable.
TechGraph: One concern frequently raised by marketers is that widespread adoption of AI could lead to creative sameness, where campaigns begin to look increasingly alike. How does SimplifyGenAI help brands maintain originality and distinctive storytelling while still benefiting from the efficiencies that AI can provide?
Gurleen Khurana: Honestly, that’s just not the case if you’re doing it right. AI can make all kinds of videos, and as I said, creativity is the only limitation. If you are working with someone who has a creative team that can actually do different kinds of stuff, you will never run out of options, because with AI you can literally make something brand new that hasn’t been done before.
The sameness happens when people just copy whatever look is trending and stop using their heads. We treat AI like an instrument; the originality still comes from the idea and the person steering it. So two brands can use the same tool and still look completely different.
TechGraph: Looking ahead, do you see AI studios such as SimplifyGenAI becoming a standard part of every brand’s content ecosystem, much like agencies and production houses are today? And what does the next phase of content production look like as AI becomes increasingly embedded in creative workflows?
Gurleen Khurana: A hundred percent. We will definitely see these companies working with AI production houses as a standard part of their ecosystem, just like marketing agencies are today. It’s only a matter of time. And the next phase, honestly, AI is basically going to become the way to create anything.
Right now people still treat it like a separate thing you go to for a particular output, but soon it’s just going to be the default way work gets made. And the brands that win won’t be the ones with the biggest budget; it’ll be the ones who learned how to direct these tools early and built that taste into their team. We are kind of already working this way, and in a few years everyone else will be too.