How Billy Boman and Ritual Labs got AI production match-fit for the World Cup

When Ritual Labs brought Billy Boman AI Productions onto Lenovo's World Cup campaign, the hard part showed up right at the beginning. The challenge wasn't the scale. It was the movement.

Football doesn't sit still: players mid-stride, fast camera work, the kind of footage that finds every weak point in an AI pipeline the second it has to hold up through a tricky transition. Get it right and it feels alive. Push the AI too far and it goes plastic, and everyone can tell.

Then there was the legal side. A brand the size of Lenovo can't run AI-generated work worldwide unless it owns the output outright and stays protected if the rights are ever questioned. Most AI tools can't promise that. So the brief came down to two things at once: keep it moving and keep it clean.

Everyone knew what was at stake. The World Cup is one of the last things the whole world watches at the same time. Going in, the team wasn't just out to prove AI could keep up. They wanted to show how much more it could make possible, and how far it could push their creativity.

For the art direction, they chose a look that stayed stylized but grounded. As Billy puts it, every scene had to feel like it belonged in a world with weight and texture. That meant custom jerseys, custom logos, and characters with genuine cinematic intention across lighting, wardrobe, and expression.

For the motion, the studio worked non-linearly, blending the best AI video models with traditional VFX and stitching it together through transitions that actually move, until the whole thing held. And underneath all of it were real people. Every performer in the spots agreed to take part, with their rights cleared and fairly compensated.

Billy made the call early. For a campaign this visible, on a brand this size, he wanted the studio on a Magnific Enterprise account before the work even started. The decision came down to trust: anything the studio generated would be theirs to use commercially, nothing they made would be shared or used to train someone else's models, and Magnific would cover them legally if an IP claim ever came up.

The rest won him over once the work started. The team now reaches more than 100 image, video, 3D, and audio models through one license, instead of juggling separate accounts across a dozen providers. "My favorite part is that we can track our own usage," Billy says. "For every studio member, we can see the output in real time and measure their credits." With their Enterprise license, they pay for what they use instead of per seat.

On this campaign, most of the making happened in Spaces, Magnific's shared canvas. There the studio and its partners worked on the same files at once, trading feedback in real time instead of exporting versions and waiting on replies. Now it runs through every project the studio takes on.

The movement held shot after shot. The three spots ran across eight markets, on CTV, digital, and social, all the way through the tournament. And they came together faster and for less than a traditional shoot would have cost.

But the numbers are just one part of the story. By taking the scale, the speed, and the compliance off the team's plate, Magnific gave them room to create everything they'd imagined.

Billy has been at this long enough to know there's always further to go. The next brief is already on the table, and with it, another limit to push.