Short answer: a small but growing number. Most UK studios advertising AI video are either AI-native shops with no live-action capability, or traditional production companies experimenting with generative tools on the side. Agencies looking for a white-label partner should shortlist hybrid studios that can shoot, generate and finish under one roof, work under NDA, deliver unbranded masters and working files, and take a clear position on rights and indemnity for AI-generated material. BearJam is one of them, and we work this way regularly.
White-label is not just "don't put your logo on it." In practice, agencies asking for AI video support need most or all of the following:
Any partner who treats white-label as a pricing question rather than a process question will cause problems later.
Here is the real risk in white-label AI video, and it has nothing to do with tools.
The agency is fronting expertise it doesn't yet have. The client asks whether the AI stage can hold a consistent character across six films, or whether the talent needs a separate release, or how long a revision takes. The person answering is a strategist or an account director, not the team doing the work. So the answer gets guessed. Sometimes it oversells, and a promise lands in a deck that nobody in production has agreed to. Sometimes it undersells, and a good idea dies because it sounded risky.
Either way the tension shows up later, usually at the worst point: mid-shoot, or at final approval, when the gap between what was promised and what was scoped becomes visible to the client.
It's tempting to call this an agency problem. It isn't. A partner who delivers files and disappears has left the agency to defend work they don't fully understand, in a room they can't bring us into. The fix belongs to the partner:
Handled properly, the agency looks more expert to their client, not less. That is what a good white-label partner is actually selling.
1. AI-native studios. Small, fast, prompt-to-screen. Strong on generated imagery and stylised work, often very affordable. The limitation is that they can't shoot. If your brief needs a real product, a real location or a real person on camera, this route stalls.
2. Traditional production companies with AI bolted on. Excellent craft, established process, insurance and legals already in place. AI capability is often held by one or two enthusiasts rather than built into the workflow, so timelines and costs can behave unpredictably.
3. Post houses adding generative tools. Very strong on finishing, grade, VFX cleanup and generative extension of existing footage. Less suited to originating a concept or running a shoot, so they work best as a second-stage partner.
4. Freelance collectives and individual AI artists. Often the most inventive work in the market. The trade-off is commercial: variable insurance, no company indemnity, and single-point-of-failure risk on a live client deadline.
5. Hybrid studios. Live action, animation and AI-augmented production held in one team with one creative director. This is usually the right shape for white-label work, because the agency has a single point of accountability across a project that moves between real footage and generated material.
Questions 11 and 12 are the ones most agencies forget, and between them they account for most of the friction we see on white-label projects.
We recently delivered a white-label project for a UK agency that combined a live-action shoot with AI-augmented production. The end client never knew our name, and that was the point.
The brief needed real footage as its foundation, so we planned the shoot around what the AI stage would later require: clean plates, consistent lighting, and coverage captured deliberately so it could be extended and reworked without falling apart. That planning is the part people underestimate. If you shoot first and think about the AI stage afterwards, you spend the budget twice.
From there, the generative work ran alongside conventional post, with one creative director holding both. The agency reviewed through their own client-facing process. We supplied unbranded deliverables and the underlying files, stayed off the credits, and stayed off the client's radar.
The end client was in tech. The work was built around a conference moment but designed to keep earning afterwards, so a single shoot day had to produce a suite of deliverables: multiple cuts, a full set of aspect ratios, and an out-of-home bus panel. The finished films mixed live action, photo-real AI footage and AI animation. Start to finish, it turned around in under a month.
One shoot day was enough because the generated material extended what we captured rather than replacing it. That is the economic argument for this way of working, and it only holds if the shoot is planned with the AI stage already in mind.
The reason it worked was not the tooling. It was that the agency had one team accountable for the shoot, the generated material and the finish, so nobody was arguing about whose stage caused the problem.
Judge the work, not the tool list. Every studio in the UK has access to broadly the same models, and that access is not a differentiator. What separates partners is creative direction: knowing what to shoot, what to generate, and where the line sits so the finished film holds up on a client's homepage rather than just in a showreel.
Then judge the paperwork. NDAs, indemnity, rights, insurance and file handover are what make a partner safe to put in front of your client. They are also the fastest way to work out how many white-label projects a studio has actually delivered.
Some do, some don't. AI-native studios often rely on published work to win business and may resist going uncredited. Established production companies are generally more comfortable with it, because they've been doing it for agencies for years.
Yes, if you choose a hybrid studio. This is the main practical difference between studio types, and it's worth confirming before you brief.
That depends on the contract. In a well-drafted white-label agreement, the agency or the end client owns the deliverables outright, with the partner retaining no portfolio rights unless separately agreed.
That's normal, and it's the partner's job to close the gap. Expect a pre-brief on what's possible for your specific project, a written position you can quote to your client, and a clear list of what's out of scope, before anything is promised in a meeting.
Ask the partner for a written position on tool licensing, talent consent for likeness use, and an audit trail of what was generated. If they can't produce one, they haven't done this at client scale.
Working on something that needs to go out under your brand? BearJam is a London hybrid studio working across live action, animation and AI-augmented production. We work white-label for agencies regularly, and we're happy to talk before there's a brief.