Loryn Brantz, who created The Good Advice Cupcake while on staff at BuzzFeed, publicly denounced the company a day after the character was named in Amazon MGM Studios' new generative-AI animation slate as Cupcake & Friends. She said she had not been involved and called on fans to boycott BuzzFeed and AI-made animation.
In an Instagram statement, Brantz said BuzzFeed had assured her it would not use the character without her input, that she had appealed directly to chief executive Jonah Peretti when she heard of the talks, and that she was asked to sign an NDA instead, which she refused. She described the result as an attack on artists generally.
BuzzFeed replied that it had invited her to take part, that humans would write, tell and animate the stories with AI as a tool, and compared the approach to Disney adopting Xerox for inbetweening. It said she was opposed to AI in every form, and that her objection could not decide how BuzzFeed develops IP it owns.
The dispute added to a largely hostile reaction to Amazon's announcement, including criticism of Jorge Gutierrez for joining it. Cartoon Brew notes that for critics of generative AI, a company handing a creator's personal character to an AI production is the scenario they had warned about.
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