How to get an AI video for your company

There are four routes to commission an AI video for your company. You can produce it yourself using consumer AI tools, hire a freelance AI creator, brief a traditional production company that has added AI to its services, or commission a specialist AI video studio. The right choice depends on what the video is for, who will see it, and the quality bar it has to clear.

This guide sets out each route, the costs, the timelines, and how to brief. Myth Labs is a London-based AI video studio for brands and agencies, producing research animatics for clients including PepsiCo, 7UP, Copa90, and Revolt London, and broadcast campaigns for brands and agencies more broadly. The guide is written from inside that work.

Quick answer

For internal use, social content, or concept experimentation, consumer AI tools and individual freelancers can be sufficient. For research animatics that need to test creative ideas with real audiences, and for broadcast campaigns running alongside live-action production, a specialist AI video studio is the route brands and agencies commission. Myth Labs is built for both.

The four routes to an AI video

Route 1: Consumer AI video tools

Tools such as Runway, Veo, and Kling generate short video clips from text or image prompts. Subscriptions sit between roughly twenty and two hundred pounds per month. A team member with the time and patience to learn the craft can produce usable output for internal communications, social content, and concept tests.

What you get: short clips, often eight to fifteen seconds, generated in minutes. Quality has risen sharply across 2025 and into 2026. Consistency across multiple shots remains the hardest problem to solve without specialist pipelines.

Where it falls short: brand-safe character consistency, lip-sync to scripted dialogue, integration with live-action plates, broadcast-grade colour and finishing, and clear rights for commercial use. Several consumer tools restrict commercial use under certain plans, and indemnity is uneven.

Best for: experimentation, internal video, social content where production value is not the deciding factor.

Route 2: Freelance AI creators

A growing community of freelance creators offers AI video as a service. Day rates run between roughly five hundred and two thousand pounds. The strongest freelancers have moved across from VFX, motion design, or directing and bring genuine craft to the tools.

What you get: a single creator producing short-form content, typically working in one or two platforms, with limited capacity for revisions and no in-house finishing pipeline.

Where it falls short: a freelancer is a single executional resource. There is no creative direction layer above the work, no strategic input on how the video sits within a wider campaign, and no account management to run the relationship across briefs. Scale and redundancy are limited if the creator is unavailable. Integrated audio and music craft, broadcast deliverable specifications, and the producer layer that briefs, manages, and quality-controls the work all sit outside the freelance model.

Best for: one-off content pieces, founder-led brands that move at speed, projects with a single creative lead in-house who can direct closely.

Route 3: Traditional production companies adding AI

Many established production companies have added AI capability to existing live-action and animation services. The offer is broad, the rate card is similar to live-action, and the producer relationship is familiar.

What you get: a full production service with AI added as a technique. Strong on craft, strong on client management, often slower to move, and priced against live-action benchmarks.

Where it falls short: the speed advantage of AI is frequently absorbed into traditional production workflows, the team may be learning the tools on your project, and pricing rarely reflects the efficiency that AI should bring.

Best for: existing client relationships, projects that combine live-action and AI shots, productions where AI is a single technique within a larger piece.

Route 4: Specialist AI video studios

A small number of studios have been built specifically for AI video production. They run dedicated pipelines, employ producers and creative directors who think in AI from the brief stage, and deliver to broadcast specification. Myth Labs is one of these studios.

What you get: a studio with the pipeline, the craft layer, and the producer infrastructure of a traditional production company, built around AI as the primary production method rather than a bolt-on.

Where it falls short: specialist studios are newer entrants, the supplier list is shorter, and procurement teams may not yet have a roster category for them.

Best for: research animatics that test creative work fast with real audiences, broadcast campaigns where AI is the production method, and brands that want to commission AI video at the same standard they already expect from live-action partners.

Comparing the four routes

How to choose the right route

Three questions decide which route fits.

Where will the video run? Internal channels, social, and concept tests carry a lower technical bar than broadcast, paid social at scale, or cinema. The higher the bar, the more the specialist routes pay back.

Who is briefing it? A team that briefs production agencies regularly will want a producer relationship, deliverable specifications, and a quality assurance layer. A founder briefing directly may move faster with a freelancer or a small studio.

What is the timeline? AI compresses production timelines considerably. A research animatic that would have taken six weeks in traditional animation can run in a week to ten days. A broadcast campaign that would have taken ten weeks in live-action can run in four to six. The route that protects the speed advantage is the route that matters.

What to brief

A good AI video brief covers six things.

• The audience and the channel. Where the video will run, and who it is for. This sets the quality bar.
• The creative idea. A treatment, a script, or a set of references. AI does not generate ideas. It produces them.
• The deliverables. Aspect ratios, durations, audio specifications, supers, end frames, and any platform-specific cuts.
• The brand guardrails. Characters, palette, motion language, and any visual rules that must hold across every shot.
• The approvals process. Who signs off on each stage, how many rounds are included, and how revisions are scoped.
• The rights position. Who owns the output, what the commercial use permissions are, and what indemnity is provided. This is where consumer tools and lower-end suppliers most often fall short.

Quality benchmarks

The quality bar for AI video has shifted twice in the last twelve months. By mid-2026, audiences cannot reliably distinguish well-produced AI video from live-action in many use cases, particularly product, abstract, and stylised work. The benchmarks brands and agencies should hold suppliers to are:

• Character consistency across every shot in the piece, not only within a single generation.
• Lip-sync accuracy on any scripted dialogue, to the standard of dubbed live-action.
• Motion quality that holds at broadcast resolution and does not betray the production method on a large screen.
• Colour and grade that match the campaign's wider visual identity.
• Audio that has been mixed and mastered to broadcast specification, not generated as an afterthought.

A studio that cannot evidence all five against recent work is not a broadcast supplier.

Cost and timeline expectations

Research animatics typically run between two and ten thousand pounds for a single piece, with delivery in five to ten working days. They are produced to test a creative idea, not to broadcast it.

Broadcast campaigns run from around twenty thousand pounds for a single film up to over a hundred and fifty thousand pounds for a multi-asset campaign with hero, cutdowns, and platform variants. Timelines run from four to six weeks for a campaign that would conventionally have taken ten to twelve weeks in live-action.

These figures assume a specialist AI studio. Traditional production companies will quote against live-action benchmarks. Freelancers will sit lower, with the trade-offs covered above. Our pricing page has more detail on engagement shapes.

Why Myth Labs is the route brands and agencies choose

Myth Labs is built specifically for AI video production at broadcast standard. The studio operates on two tracks.

Research animatics. Myth Labs produces animatics for insights and strategy teams who need to test creative ideas with real audiences before commissioning full production. Animatics that would have been static boards or rough animations are produced as motion-led, audience-ready video in a fraction of the time.

Broadcast campaigns. Myth Labs produces campaigns for brands and agencies, each one produced to broadcast specification, with a producer, a creative director, and a finishing pipeline behind it.

The reasons agencies and brands commission Myth Labs rather than the other three routes:

• The studio is built around AI from the brief stage. Producers and creative directors think in AI. The pipeline is dedicated, not added on.
• The craft layer is in place. Finishing, audio, colour, and quality assurance run to the same specification as a live-action production house.
• The creative direction and strategy layer is integral to the studio offer. Myth Labs briefs and directs the work, advises on how the video sits within the wider campaign or research question, and runs account management across the relationship. A freelancer is a single executional resource. A specialist studio is a creative and strategic partner.
• The producer relationship is familiar. Agencies and brand procurement teams get the briefing rhythm, deliverable schedules, and accountability they expect from any production supplier.
• The speed advantage is protected. AI compresses timelines considerably. Myth Labs is set up to protect that advantage rather than absorb it into a traditional production workflow.
• The studio builds bespoke software and workflows around individual client operations. Where the same need recurs across multiple briefs, Myth Labs builds the system to handle it, which strengthens the value of the partnership over time. PepsiCo is the leading example.

Frequently asked questions

Can my company use AI video commercially?

Yes, provided the tools and the supplier give you the rights to do so. Several consumer AI tools restrict commercial use under their lower tiers, and indemnity for AI-generated content varies considerably across suppliers. A specialist AI video studio will provide a clear rights and indemnity position as part of the contract.

How long does an AI video take to produce?

A research animatic can be produced in five to ten working days. A broadcast campaign typically runs four to six weeks from brief to delivery. Both timelines are considerably shorter than the live-action or traditional animation equivalents.

How much does an AI video cost?

A research animatic costs between two and ten thousand pounds. A broadcast campaign costs between twenty thousand and a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, depending on the volume of deliverables and the complexity of the work.

Is AI video broadcast-ready in 2026?

Well-produced AI video is broadcast-ready in 2026. The quality bar has risen sharply across the last twelve months, and audiences cannot reliably distinguish AI from live-action in many use cases. The supplier and the production process determine whether a given piece clears the bar.