Amazon MGM Studios and Amazon Web Services (AWS) commemorated the launch of their new GenAI Creators’ Fund Wednesday with the greenlighting of three animated series that will be made with generative AI tools.
At its AI on the Lot event Wednesday, Amazon announced it has greenlit “Cupcake & Friends” from BuzzFeed Studios, “Love, Diana Music Hunters” from creator and pocket.watch Chief Content Officer Albie Hecht and “Punky Duck” from creator Jorge R. Gutierrez. All three shows are slated to premiere on Prime Video at a future date.
“Cupcake & Friends” will follow a relatable cupcake and her friends as they experience unexpected challenges at a sleepover. “Love, Diana Music Hunters,” meanwhile, is inspired by pocket.watch creator partner Diana and will follow the members of a young, space-traveling K-pop group as they race to Planet Goo to perform a concert that has the power to save the planet’s alien inhabitants and bring music back to their home.
Finally, “Punky Duck” will center on a lovable punk duck and his best friend, Smiley Cat, as they live in a wild, alternate reality version of Los Angeles overrun by alien invasions, giant monsters, robot criminal conspiracies, telenovela-style family drama and supernatural mayhem.
The shows are the result of Amazon’s new GenAI Creators’ Fund, a joint initiative backed by Amazon MGM and AWS and powered by Project Nara, Amazon MGM’s AI production platform built on AWS that is intended to empower human creativity rather than diminish it. As part of its Creators’ Fund, Amazon hopes to provide established filmmakers, digital creators and technology startups with access to professional-grade AI tools and funding in the hopes of producing “high-quality cinematic entertainment.”
The fund provides grants for both proof-of-concepts and shorts made by creators who have built online digital audiences but thus far have not had access to professional-level production tools. It will provide the same service to tech startups working on solving existing, production-related industry problems.
“Creative breakthroughs happen when visionary storytellers are given access to transformative tools,” Albert Cheng, the Head of AI Studios at Amazon MGM Studios, said in a statement Wednesday. “The GenAI Creators’ Fund and Project Nara position human creativity at the center of our efforts to integrate generative AI into our production processes at Amazon MGM Studios. We’re proud of the work that these filmmakers have accomplished and look forward to sharing these creators’ visions with the world.”
Project Nara is a production workspace capable of generating video, edits, feedback and progress tracking in real time, and which supports both live-action and animation projects. It remains exclusively available to use by Amazon MGM Studios and by the creators chosen to participate in the company’s GenAI Creators’ Fund.
“Amazon has quietly and methodically assembled the only end-to-end AI content creation ecosystem in the industry, spanning from infrastructure to creative tools to distribution and funding of creative content,” Samira Bakhtiar, AWS’ GM of Media & Entertainment, Games and Sports, said. “Project Nara illustrates how AWS can help filmmakers of all kinds bring AI to the full creative pipeline, from concept to screen, using a wide range of familiar models and tools on a cloud trusted by the entertainment industry.”
“With investments like the GenAI Creators’ Fund, our collaboration with Innovative Dreams around hybrid filmmaking, and partnerships with leading generative AI providers like Luma and fal, AWS is building an ecosystem for human creativity powered by AI,” Bakhtiar concluded.
Amazon’s announcement continues its ongoing, aggressive AI push. Just last week, the company launched Alexa Podcasts, a new AI podcast episode generator.
