No singers, dancers or actors: How a Delhi Gen Z team made an AI song for Modi’s birthday

There was no singer in a recording studio, no dancers rehearsing for a shoot at Connaught Place and no actors facing a camera

There was no singer in a recording studio, no dancers rehearsing for a shoot at Connaught Place and no actors facing a camera. Yet, in 10 days, a group of multimedia students in Delhi had produced a full-fledged music video using 2D and 3D design, animation, motion graphics and generative artificial intelligence (AI) to wish Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday on Friday.

The team, with CM Rekha Gupta and minister Ashish Sood. (HT Photo)

Released by the Delhi government on Thursday as part of its ‘Sewa Sankalp Abhiyan’, the song was created by students associated with Maya Academy of Advanced Creativity (MAAC). It was one of two songs released on the occasion, with the other prepared and performed by government school students.

If the technology gives the video its form, Gen Z gives it its language.

The lyrics are liberally peppered with “bro”, “vibe”, “lit”, “slay”, “GOAT”, “flex”, “no cap” and “iconic”, borrowing from vocabulary more readily encountered on reels and meme pages.

Even Modi’s familiar “Mitron” greeting gets a Gen Z makeover, with the song opening with a casual “friends”. The meme phrase “Vasteguna Huiyaa” also makes an appearance.

The team said they spent time tracking social media trends and looking at expressions used by Modi in his video messages before settling on the language.

For Mayank Choudhary, who runs MAAC, the project came together in a little over a week.

“We got associated with the Delhi government around June and had been working on a few things when the idea of developing a song for Modiji’s birthday came up during my discussions with minister Ashish Sood. There was no formal plan initially,” Choudhary said.

He approached Sood’s team around 15 days before the birthday. The response was to go ahead, leaving the team roughly 10 days to put the song and video together.

“The only brief was to develop a song wishing birthday to the PM from a Gen Z point of view. So we got our Gen Z on board. We had complete creative liberty,” he said.

The resulting video was created entirely on computers.

According to Choudhary, that included the design, content, lyrics, visuals and video. The process did not simply involve entering a prompt into an AI tool and generating a finished video, the students said. They first had to work on the creative and technical components that would eventually guide the AI-generated output.

“People think using generative AI means using a prompt that will give it all to you, but that is not the case. The students need to know 2D and 3D designing themselves to be able to give the right prompts. They have to learn animation, camera angles, composition and lighting to be able to generate a video on the computer,” Choudhary said.

The team also used reference footage while creating the sequences. “In many cases we performed dance moves and uploaded them as references. Then we added layers, designs,” he said.

The students — Adarsh Kumar Mishra, Mahtab Alam, Ayush Sharma and Subhadeep Das — worked under mentor Ravi Sharma. Their work involved 2D and 3D visualisation, designing, lyrics, motion graphics and post-production, with several rounds of editing. The team used software including Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects and Audition, alongside AI tools.

For Adarsh and Mahtab, the project also became an opportunity to put classroom learning into practice.

“We are learning all of this first hand and it was an opportunity for us to showcase what we can do,” the students said.

The absence of conventional performers was central to the production. “It is unbelievable for many that this video has no singers, dancers or performers and that it is entirely computer generated,” they said.

The final product was assembled through the combination of design, animation, AI-generated visuals, music and post-production rather than a conventional song shoot.

The Delhi government launched the songs at the Secretariat on Friday in the presence of chief minister Rekha Gupta, Sood and students. For the students involved, the project ended where their training began -- with the use of digital tools to create visual content to extend birthday wishes to the PM.

To mainstream the designing and animation skills, the Delhi government has also recently launched its first four-year degree course for these skills at the Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University (DSEU) along with MAAC.