A music video unfolds in a world glowing with neon lights and shadowed alleys. It has stylised figures dancing and partying. The focus seems to be on a woman swaying alone at its centre. The beat is Punjabi, but the mood feels global. No cameras rolled, no crew called ‘action.’ Everything here was born from prompts and code.
Every frame of Belly Dance, the new track by Mixman Shawn, Mistah FAB, and Kool John, was created entirely by AI. The vision belongs to Malayali filmmaker and director Sajeed A, with Seher Bedi producing under Superflix Labs. Made in collaboration with Mr Babu Records, the project fuses hip-hop swagger with digital fantasy.
“What we’re seeing is the beginning of a new era,” says Sajeed. “Twenty-five years ago, cable and broadcast changed culture. Ten years ago, it was Web 2; now Web 3, AI, blockchain. The next wave will be AI-led entertainment. You can’t run away from it. AI will dominate our lives whether we like it or not. So we started thinking, ‘how do we use this to create entertainment?’”
Superflix Labs, co-founded by Sajeed and Seher Bedi, the niece of actor Kabir Bedi and a member of the Emmy Jury, focuses on new-age storytelling.
“We’re always asking what new things we can try in this space,” he says. “We had so many fantasy story ideas that never got made. Over the last two years, we realised we don’t need big studios if we have the right talent. So we decided to experiment.”
The idea for Belly Dance began with a conversation with Riad Saha, founder of Mr Babu Records. “We told him we wanted to make a music video and asked if he had a track. He shared Belly Dance with us,” recalls Sajeed. “But it was tough because AI tools have strict content filters. Anything slightly revealing or sensual gets flagged. Still, we decided to go ahead.”
Instead of a typical Middle Eastern tent, the team reimagined the video in an underground club, a nod to urban subcultures, Red Bull dance contests, and raw street performances. The story follows a woman dancing to the beat, a sensual, free-flowing expression.
Once the concept was set, the team created a detailed storyboard and shared it with the band in the US. After approval, production went full swing. Every frame was built and refined through GenAI tools before being stitched together in the edit.
“We wanted to show what Indian indie teams can do when technology becomes part of the creative process,” says Riad Saha.
For Seher Bedi, the project felt like a creative homecoming. “It was thrilling to produce one of the first fully AI-generated music videos in India,” she says. “Our ‘MTV DNA’ kicked in. Belly Dance was imagined as a street-style evolution of belly dancing — raw, urban, and charged with underground energy.”
The three-minute video took months of iteration. Superflix Labs’ small team split the work: one group designed characters, another handled movement, another worked on effects. “The hardest part was keeping the characters consistent,” says Sajeed. “Creating one person is easy. Making that person walk, drive, or sit in a cafe — that’s tough.”
They generated nearly 50 times more visuals than what finally made it to the screen, handpicking the best ones. Each sequence was sifted, edited, and layered to create something cinematic yet dreamlike.
“Everything has an audience. Facebook has its crowd, Instagram has its crowd, TikTok has its crowd. And GenAI will have its own,” says Sajeed.
“That audience is Gen Alpha. They will be the biggest audience for this kind of work. AI won’t replace cinema or advertising; it’s just a tool. For me, it helps tell stories faster and more efficiently. Without going to Los Angeles or the Bay Area, we could sit here and build that world. It’s cost-effective, and for indie artists, that’s huge.
That’s where AI becomes democratic. It gives creative power to those without big budgets.”
He knows exactly who he’s speaking to. “My goal is to talk to Gen Alpha — the generation that will live inside digital worlds. I’m not trying to convince people who complain about a lack of realism. They’re not our audience. The idea was to show that a music video can be made differently and still be fun.”
Still, he admits that AI cannot replace human emotion. “It’s trained on data. That’s why I always label it ‘Created in collaboration with GenAI.’ The audience should know what they’re watching. It’s just like walking into a photo exhibition and knowing the medium.”
Looking ahead, Sajeed believes things will only move faster. “Advanced Artificial General Intelligence is already being tested. Some models are unbelievably human. It’s scary. But it won’t replace traditional media. It’ll just add another layer.”
Recently, a hip-hop artist from Kochi called him after watching the video. “He said, ‘We want to do this!’” Sajeed smiles. “That’s the point. These artists don’t have big budgets. If this inspires them to experiment, we have done our job.”
