“Our dramas, our serials have to be based on the news. We can’t do fiction.”

That is Girish Agarwal, Director of D.B. Corp, on the company’s July 20 earnings call. He was describing AI-generated micro-drama series running on the Dainik Bhaskar app. The company publishes India’s largest-circulated Hindi daily. It is now using its own reported journalism as the script material for synthetic video.

Why it matters: A newspaper dramatising its own reporting is not new. Doing it with generative video, at speed and at low cost, and cross-posting the result to YouTube, is. Nothing D.B. Corp has said publicly establishes who verifies the facts in a micro-drama, whether viewers are told that the visuals and dialogue are AI-generated, or whether people who appear in the underlying news story are recreated synthetically. No Indian rule requires any of that.

What was actually disclosed

The disclosure is short. It came from an analyst’s question rather than from the company’s own presentation. Lohit Saini of Jay Ram Wealth asked about micro-drama platforms and the Bhaskar series on the app.

“So as you rightly noticed that we are doing a couple of micro dramas using the AI on our platform, and we’ve been getting good response from the readers,” Agarwal replied. “So idea is to make it more, make it more relevant. Only difference is that our dramas, our serials has to be based on the news. We can’t do fiction. So that’s the reason we have a slight limited scope to play there, but still pretty large. And we continue to do more.”

On distribution, he said the company is posting them on YouTube and other platforms “to get some traction there also”. Asked about an English version, he said: “English app slightly later because all the resources are in Hindi and Gujarati. So to be very honest, English, but later, not now.”

Separately, on the same call, Agarwal said the company uses “a little bit of use of AI” alongside animation in editorial content on its digital platforms. He named Uttar Pradesh as a focus market because the group has no print presence there.

That is the whole of it. Across the four earnings calls before this one, D.B. Corp made no AI disclosure at all. In the previous quarter, management described “personalized content formats” in the digital business without attributing them to AI or any specific technology.

What was not disclosed

There is no number anywhere in the disclosure. The company has not said how many series have been made, what they cost, what they earn, or how many people watched them. There is no AI spend figure, headcount, or infrastructure line.

There is also no editorial detail, and that is the part that matters more than the money. The company has not said publicly:

• whether scripts are generated from published articles automatically or written by a person;
• who checks a micro-drama for factual accuracy before it goes up, and whether the reporting desk is involved;
• whether the journalist whose reporting becomes the source is credited;
• whether real people named in a news report are depicted, and if so, how their likeness is generated;
• whether the video carries a label telling viewers it is AI-generated.

The distinction the copy has to hold

There is a difference between AI-assisted journalism and AI-generated entertainment made out of journalism. D.B. Corp is describing the second one.

The first is a production tool. A newsroom using AI to animate a chart or transcribe an interview is doing ordinary editorial work. The second takes verified reporting and turns it into dramatised video, with invented framing, pacing and, presumably, dialogue. Agarwal’s own line describes a constraint on the source material: the serials have to be based on the news. It says nothing about what the dramatisation adds on top.

That gap is where the editorial risk sits. A reported story about, say, a local crime becomes a short video with characters, a soundtrack and a narrative arc. Whether a viewer understands that the depiction is synthetic depends entirely on what the video tells them.

What Indian rules require, which is close to nothing

The Code of Ethics under Part III of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 applies to publishers of news and current affairs content. Dainik Bhaskar’s app is one. The Code requires adherence to the Norms of Journalistic Conduct of the Press Council of India and to the Programme Code. It also sets up a three-tier grievance mechanism. It says nothing about synthetic or AI-generated depiction.

MeitY’s draft second amendment to the IT Rules was released on March 30, 2026. It would extend the Code of Ethics to users who are not publishers but post news and current affairs. It remains a draft. Labelling obligations for synthetically generated information sit in a separate strand of amendments. Those apply to intermediaries, not to a publisher dramatising its own copy on its own app.

So, on the current record, a news publisher can turn its reporting into AI-generated video and need not say so. Whether it should is an editorial question. D.B. Corp is one of the first large Indian publishers to have to answer it.

Not the only one

D.B. Corp is not an outlier. Balaji Telefilms has an in-house AI team and has described an AI-driven show and an AI music library. Radio City’s parent runs an AI radio jockey. What separates the Bhaskar case is the source material. This is the only one where the input is the company’s own journalism.

The pattern across all of them is the same. AI-made output is reaching Indian audiences. No listed Indian media company has attached a revenue, cost, or licensing figure to any of it.

Questions MediaNama has sent

To D.B. Corp:

• How many AI micro-drama series have been produced, and what does each cost to make?
• Are scripts generated from published articles, and by what process?
• Who verifies factual accuracy before publication, and is the reporting desk involved?
• Are people named or depicted in the underlying news story recreated synthetically, and is consent sought?
• Are viewers told that the visuals and dialogue are AI-generated, and where does that disclosure appear?
• Is the journalist whose reporting is the source credited?
• Are the micro-dramas monetised separately, including through YouTube advertising, and what have they earned?

To the Press Council of India and the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting:

• Whether the Norms of Journalistic Conduct or the Code of Ethics require disclosure when a publisher dramatises its own reporting using generative tools.

This copy will be updated with the responses.

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