Prime Video's AI Series Castle Walls Is Here. JioHotstar Already Tried This, and Where Did It Get Them?

Okay. So it's actually happening.

Not a pitch deck. Not a "what if" panel at some tech summit. Prime Video is distributing Castle Walls, a series built with generative AI, and The Ankler has called it the first fully AI-generated television series from a major platform.

Yesterday we were talking about Hollywood's biggest names filing court papers telling OpenAI to ask first. Today the other side of that fight has something to sell. For writers, directors and crews, the scary hypothetical now has a play button.

What Castle Walls actually is

It's a Turkish historical drama, Surlar in the original, made by AI Yapim, the Singapore-based AI subsidiary of Ay Yapim. If that name rings a bell, it should. Ay Yapim is the studio behind Endless Love, Ezel and Fatmagül, the shows that made Turkish dizi a global habit.

The story is set around Alamut Castle in present-day Iran, a place gamers will recognise from Assassin's Creed Mirage. The episodes run roughly 15 minutes each. It's written by Kerem Deren and Çisil Hazal Tenim, both proper Turkish TV veterans.

The toolkit reads like a tech conference lanyard: ChatGPT, Midjourney, Runway, Google's Nano Banana, Veo, Kling, ComfyUI, Topaz, ElevenLabs, plus an in-house storyboard tool and a proprietary video model called AYDNA 1.0, which the studio says was fine-tuned on its own licensed catalogue.

And to be fair, Ay Yapim says humans are still in the room. The character and location concepts started as hand-drawn sketches, and the series was dubbed by human voice actors.

"AI Yapim was created to fuse human imagination with AI innovation to shape the next era of storytelling," said Ay Yapim CEO Kerem Çatay.

Here's my take: India already ran this experiment

Everyone's treating Castle Walls like the first domino. Babe, we've seen this domino.

In October 2025, JioHotstar launched Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, a 100-episode series made with AI. And the launch numbers were genuinely big. It reportedly pulled 6.5 million video views on day one, more than double the platform's average reach for a series, and later reports put it at 26.5 million views. JioStar has since been building out a whole AI slate and hired US screenwriter and producer Stephan Bugaj to lead its generative AI content strategy.

So did it work? Here's where I get honest.

Views happened. A cultural moment, in my book, did not. A year on, where are the quotable lines? The character edits? The fandom, the meme format, the "where were you when" moment? What people did talk about was the "AI slop" criticism: distorted faces, glitchy visuals, characters with extra fingers, props that looked wrong for the period.

Curiosity got people to press play. As far as I can see, that's the whole result so far.

Why that matters for Castle Walls

Novelty is a one-time cheat code. The first AI show gets clicks because it's the first AI show. The second one gets clicks because people want to see if it's bad. The tenth one? It has to be good, in the old-fashioned, did-this-make-me-feel-something way.

And that's the bit nobody's cracked. Mythology and history are the obvious starting point because the story is already written and the audience already cares. The AI just renders it. But rendering isn't storytelling. A Mahabharat with extra fingers is still the Mahabharat. People came for the epic, not the engine.

So, will other platforms follow?

Probably, quietly, because the maths is tempting. Short episodes, a small human team, a known story. That's a spreadsheet that makes executives very happy.

But the open question isn't whether platforms can make AI shows. It's whether audiences will ever love one. Not watch. Love. Rewatch. Argue about. Name their dog after a character.

Until that happens, Castle Walls is a test case, and JioHotstar is the receipt. A big number on day one and then silence isn't a revolution. It's a trailer for one that hasn't arrived yet.

If you want the bigger picture on how Indian streaming is shifting, read our piece on why YouTube is becoming the new TV in India.

Frequently asked questions

What is Castle Walls?

Castle Walls (Surlar in Turkish) is a short historical drama made with generative AI by AI Yapim, the Singapore-based AI arm of Turkish studio Ay Yapim. It is written by Kerem Deren and Çisil Hazal Tenim and is set around Alamut Castle.

Where can I watch Castle Walls?

Castle Walls is streaming on Prime Video, which picked up the series in August 2026. Availability can vary by market.

How long are the episodes?

Each episode runs roughly 15 minutes.

Was any of Castle Walls made by humans?

Yes. Ay Yapim says the character and location concepts began as hand-drawn sketches and that the series was dubbed by human voice actors. The writing is credited to two veteran Turkish TV writers.

Has an Indian platform made an AI series?

Yes. JioHotstar launched Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh, a 100-episode AI-made series, in October 2025.

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Vishal Waghela is the Co-Founder of AltBollywood and a proud neo-generalist who refuses to pick a lane. Film, music, memes, fashion, AI, internet subcultures: if pop culture touches it, he's already three rabbit holes deep. He writes the way he lives online, loud, emotional, a little chaotic and always honest about why culture makes us feel things. Come argue with him on Instagram at @vishal.waghe1a.