Storytelling in the Age of AI—What Neelesh Misra Thinks

This piece came from somewhere between a late-night scroll and a half-finished cup of chai, you pause—not on a headline, but on a voice you already trust. Not a loud opinion. Not a definitive take. Just a series of thoughts, scattered across time.

Over the past months, if you’ve followed Neelesh Misra on his official X account closely, you would have noticed something interesting. He hasn’t written one long piece on AI. He hasn’t taken a clear stand for or against it. Instead, he has been thinking out loud—through tweets, posted on different days, in different moods, at different moments.

And somewhere between those tweets, a story begins to form. It starts with excitement. The kind that feels like standing at the edge of something new. “The idea of having a @RaiseAISummit is brilliant — and so is the vision of making India the world’s AI hub. We need to understand the limitless possibilities of technology to use it for social good.” There is hope in that thought. A sense that this isn’t just about machines or code, but about what a country can become. Not just users of technology, but creators of it. Storytellers of a new kind. It feels expansive and full of possibility.

But thoughts, when they are honest, don’t stay in one place for too long. On another day, almost as if the excitement had settled into something quieter, he asks:

“How will the kind of #audio #storytelling I do, and mentor others to do, be impacted by #technology changes of the future — #ArtificialIntelligence or #VirtualReality or #AugmentedReality? Will they take it to a new level across languages or will they kill it?”

And suddenly, the question shifts everything. Because this isn’t about technology anymore. It’s about storytelling. About voice. About something deeply human. The kind of storytelling that lives in pauses, in silences, in the weight of a sentence. And now, that world stands at a crossroads.

Days later, the conversation seems to expand outward again—less philosophical, more practical, almost overwhelmed. “We need one website that aggregates links to all the AI agents, function and core strength-wise. So hard to keep track. (Could be a business idea for someone).” And when he says this, you can almost picture the moment. Too many tabs open. Too many tools. Too much happening too fast. AI is no longer a distant idea—it’s a daily presence. And keeping up with it feels like a task in itself.

But beneath all of this movement—this excitement, this curiosity, this overload—comes a question that feels heavier than the rest. “Will you feed terabytes of our video content to your AI engines and will it become compromised in some form, or will you be able to reassure content creators about the sanctity of their content?”

Here, the tone changes again. Because behind every story is a person. Behind every voice is memory, effort, lived experience. And the question is no longer about what AI can do—but what it might take away. Can something so deeply personal be absorbed into something so vast… without losing its essence?

And yet, even in this uncertainty, there is no rejection. No shutting the door. Instead, there is curiosity again. A willingness to step closer.

“This is brilliant — we should bring audio storytelling to this AI spectacle!” he posted another day and it feels like a quiet acceptance. Not of answers, but of change itself. That maybe storytelling doesn’t disappear—it adapts. Maybe it travels farther, reaches deeper, finds new forms.

And then, almost unexpectedly, comes a moment that grounds everything. “My 86-year-old father Dr S.B. Misra, who has seen rural India since before independence, right into the AI era.”

In that one line lives an entire timeline. From handwritten letters to voice notes. From radio to reels. From stories told under open skies to stories now carried by machines. And yet, through all of it, one thing hasn’t changed—the need to tell, to listen, to understand. And perhaps that is where all these scattered thoughts begin to come together.

Because somewhere between excitement and doubt, curiosity and concern, one thing becomes clear—this is not a man choosing sides. This is someone trying to understand.

“Who is going to save the world? It’s going to be the storytellers who save the world and make sense of it.” Maybe that is the thread that runs through all of this. AI will change the format. The speed. The reach. It will translate, generate, recreate, and reimagine. It may even tell stories.

But it cannot decide why a story must be told. That still belongs to us. And so perhaps the real question isn’t whether AI will take storytelling to a new level or destroy it. It is quieter than that.

In a world that can generate anything in seconds, will we still take the time to feel it? Because no matter how intelligent our tools become, the act of making sense of the world… will always belong to those who choose to pause, to observe and to tell stories that are truly lived.

Let us know what you think too! We would love to know what our extended family thinks about AI and storytelling in the future