Amazon Is Making an AI-Animated ‘Good Advice Cupcake’ TV Show. Its Original Creator Is Furious
Amazon Is Making an AI-Animated ‘Good Advice Cupcake’ TV Show. Its Original Creator Is Furious
亚马逊正在制作一部 AI 动画版《好建议纸杯蛋糕》剧集，其原创作者对此感到愤怒
Author and illustrator Loryn Brantz never imagined that a popular cartoon character she created almost a decade ago would one day be the subject of an intellectual property dispute involving BuzzFeed, Amazon’s video streaming service, and generative artificial intelligence. But that’s exactly the situation she finds herself in today. 作家兼插画家 Loryn Brantz 从未想过，她十年前创作的一个热门卡通角色，有一天会成为涉及 BuzzFeed、亚马逊视频流媒体服务以及生成式人工智能的知识产权纠纷的主角。但这就是她今天所面临的处境。
“Nothing said in good faith by managers and executives was followed through with,” Brantz says of BuzzFeed, her former employer. “管理层和高管们出于善意所做的承诺，最终都没有兑现，”Brantz 在谈到她的前雇主 BuzzFeed 时说道。
This week, Brantz shared an Instagram post calling out the once-dominant media brand. She was responding to news that the company had licensed her advice-giving cupcake character, Cuppy, to Prime Video, which plans to release a series called Cupcake & Friends, developed with AI tools. It’s one of three new animated shows greenlit through the GenAI Creators’ Fund, a joint initiative of Amazon Web Services and Amazon MGM Studios. 本周，Brantz 在 Instagram 上发帖公开批评了这个曾经占据主导地位的媒体品牌。她此举是为了回应一则新闻：该公司已将其创作的“建议纸杯蛋糕”角色 Cuppy 授权给 Prime Video，后者计划推出一部名为《纸杯蛋糕与朋友们》（Cupcake & Friends）的系列剧，并使用 AI 工具进行开发。这是通过“生成式 AI 创作者基金”（GenAI Creators’ Fund）批准的三部新动画剧集之一，该基金是亚马逊云科技（AWS）与亚马逊米高梅影业（Amazon MGM Studios）的联合项目。
“This is an assault on artists everywhere,” Brantz declared in her post. “这是对全球艺术家的攻击，”Brantz 在帖文中宣称。
The headlines announcing the project were a nightmare come true—and a scenario that everyone who works in a creative field has begun to dread in the age of AI. Digital media outlets that have been continually restructured over the years would seem to be particularly fertile ground for such deals. (Media mogul Byron Allen just became BuzzFeed’s chairman and CEO after buying a majority stake in the brand for $120 million, describing plans to leverage AI to turn BuzzFeed into a YouTube competitor.) 宣布该项目的头条新闻简直是一场噩梦成真——这也是每个从事创意领域工作的人在 AI 时代开始感到恐惧的情景。多年来不断重组的数字媒体平台似乎成了此类交易的温床。（媒体大亨 Byron Allen 在以 1.2 亿美元收购 BuzzFeed 的多数股权后，刚刚成为该公司的董事长兼首席执行官，他描述了利用 AI 将 BuzzFeed 转变为 YouTube 竞争对手的计划。）
Brantz, a former executive creative director for the YouTube educator Ms. Rachel, blasted BuzzFeed and Amazon for their plans to turn her character into a “soulless AI puppet” on Instagram. “I encourage you to boycott BuzzFeed and any AI-produced or adjacent animation,” she wrote. Brantz 曾担任 YouTube 教育博主 Ms. Rachel 的执行创意总监，她在 Instagram 上抨击了 BuzzFeed 和亚马逊，指责他们计划将她的角色变成一个“没有灵魂的 AI 木偶”。她写道：“我鼓励大家抵制 BuzzFeed 以及任何由 AI 制作或相关的动画。”
Brantz began writing and illustrating for BuzzFeed in 2014, at the height of the outlet’s influence. She was also working on her own books and posting original content to her social media channels. In 2017, she went viral across multiple platforms with a comic featuring an anthropomorphic and innocent-looking “Good Advice Cupcake” whose demeanor violently shifts as she suggests that “when life gets you down, you gotta grab it by the balls—and make life your bitch.” Brantz 于 2014 年开始为 BuzzFeed 撰稿和绘图，当时正是该媒体影响力达到顶峰的时期。她当时也在创作自己的书籍，并在社交媒体频道发布原创内容。2017 年，她的一部漫画在多个平台上走红，主角是一个拟人化、看起来天真无邪的“好建议纸杯蛋糕”。这个角色在建议“当生活让你沮丧时，你必须抓住它的命门——让生活听命于你”时，态度会发生剧烈的转变。
“The character is 100 percent based on my own personality as being someone who is aggressively optimistic and nearly pathologically positive,” Brantz tells WIRED. “It was a way for me to yell motivational advice at people in a cute and humorous way.” “这个角色百分之百基于我自己的性格，我是一个极其乐观、甚至近乎病态积极的人，”Brantz 告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。“这对我来说是一种以可爱和幽默的方式向人们大声传达励志建议的方法。”
Originally, Brantz had come up with Cuppy for a children’s book pitch. After a Disney publishing imprint passed on the idea, she brought it into her internet comics. And when it blew up on social media, BuzzFeed saw an opportunity. 最初，Brantz 构思 Cuppy 是为了一个儿童读物的提案。在迪士尼旗下的出版部门拒绝了这个想法后，她将其引入了自己的网络漫画中。当它在社交媒体上爆火时，BuzzFeed 看到了机会。
“From there, there was a lot of back and forth on how to move forward animating it as a web series at BuzzFeed,” Brantz recalls. Ultimately, BuzzFeed produced eight episodes of a Good Advice Cupcake webseries, which ran through the summer of 2019. Topics included “Advice on Your Messy Life” and “Advice on Coming Out.” “从那时起，关于如何在 BuzzFeed 将其制作成网络系列动画，我们进行了很多来回沟通，”Brantz 回忆道。最终，BuzzFeed 制作了八集《好建议纸杯蛋糕》网络剧，该剧一直播到 2019 年夏天。主题包括“关于你一团糟生活的建议”和“关于出柜的建议”。
“When this all happened, AI didn’t even exist,” Brantz says, noting that she would never have signed a contract allowing BuzzFeed to pursue further Cuppy material created with this now ubiquitous technology. “In the end, I trusted them, though naively, when they said they had no interest in continuing Cuppy without me involved if I ever left, and that they would respect my creative wishes for her,” she says. Brantz left BuzzFeed for Ms. Rachel in 2023 and continued to license her own character from the company for her content, including a Good Advice Cupcake page on Instagram that has more than 2 million followers. “当这一切发生时，AI 甚至还不存在，”Brantz 说。她指出，如果当时知道会这样，她绝不会签署一份允许 BuzzFeed 使用这种如今无处不在的技术来制作后续 Cuppy 内容的合同。“最终，我信任了他们，尽管很天真。他们当时说，如果我离开，他们对在没有我参与的情况下继续制作 Cuppy 不感兴趣，并且会尊重我对这个角色的创作意愿，”她说。Brantz 于 2023 年离开 BuzzFeed 加入 Ms. Rachel，并继续从该公司获得自己角色的授权用于内容创作，包括一个在 Instagram 上拥有超过 200 万粉丝的“好建议纸杯蛋糕”页面。
“BuzzFeed owns the Cuppy IP, not Loryn, who is a former employee,” a BuzzFeed spokesperson tells WIRED. “BuzzFeed Studios is excited to use new technology to bring a dormant library series off the shelf and to give it new life, and we are thrilled to work with a talented team of creatives to tell new stories.” “BuzzFeed 拥有 Cuppy 的知识产权，而不是前员工 Loryn，”BuzzFeed 的一位发言人告诉《连线》杂志。“BuzzFeed 工作室很高兴能利用新技术将一个沉寂的系列作品重新搬上荧幕并赋予其新的生命，我们非常激动能与一支才华横溢的创意团队合作，讲述新的故事。”
In a statement shared with WIRED, Jonah Peretti, president of BuzzFeed AI and former CEO of the company, said they had tried to reassure Brantz about the artistic integrity of the new Cuppy series. “We shared with her that human creativity would remain at the core of this project, with writing, storytelling, and animation being developed by humans and AI being used as a creation tool to help facilitate that,” he said, drawing a comparison to Disney’s adoption of Xerox technology to facilitate the animation process. 在发给《连线》杂志的一份声明中，BuzzFeed AI 总裁兼公司前首席执行官 Jonah Peretti 表示，他们曾试图让 Brantz 对新 Cuppy 系列的艺术完整性放心。“我们告诉她，人类的创造力仍将是该项目的核心，写作、叙事和动画制作将由人类完成，而 AI 仅作为一种辅助创作工具，”他说，并将此比作迪士尼采用施乐（Xerox）技术来辅助动画制作的过程。
“However, she made it clear that she was categorically opposed to the use of AI in all its forms, and we respected that she did not want to be involved as a result,” Peretti’s statement continued. “That is absolutely her right. But her personal opposition to AI cannot determine how BuzzFeed develops IP that it owns, or deny the many other talented creators involved in this project the opportunity to do their work.” “然而，她明确表示她绝对反对以任何形式使用 AI，我们也尊重她因此不愿参与的决定，”Peretti 的声明继续说道。“这完全是她的权利。但她个人对 AI 的反对不能决定 BuzzFeed 如何开发其拥有的知识产权，也不能剥夺参与该项目的其他许多才华横溢的创作者进行工作的机会。”
Brantz says she reached out to Peretti earlier this year, after hearing rumors about BuzzFeed’s animation deal with Amazon, and other creatives told her they had been approached about writing Cuppy scripts. She claims that he would only offer more details of the project if she signed a nondisclosure agreement. Brantz declined. Brantz 表示，她在今年早些时候听到了关于 BuzzFeed 与亚马逊动画交易的传闻，且其他创作者告诉她，有人曾联系他们撰写 Cuppy 的剧本，于是她联系了 Peretti。她声称，Peretti 表示只有在她签署保密协议的情况下才会提供项目的更多细节。Brantz 拒绝了。
“Contrary to their statement, they did not contact me about this project and only mentioned telling me more after it became clear I would make a scene,” she says. “Which I am.” “与他们的声明相反，他们并没有就这个项目联系我，只是在明确我会闹大之后，才提到会告诉我更多信息，”她说。“而我确实正在这么做。”
In a follow-up Instagram post about Peretti’s statement, Brantz said that BuzzFeed was being deliberately vague in describing how AI would be used in the making of Cupcake & Friends and challenged the equating of AI with Xerox as deeply misleading. “If Jonah would like to debate the history and integrity of animation on a public platform at any time, I’m happy to oblige,” she wrote. 在随后关于 Peretti 声明的 Instagram 帖文中，Brantz 表示 BuzzFeed 在描述如何使用 AI 制作《纸杯蛋糕与朋友们》时故意含糊其辞，并质疑将 AI 等同于施乐技术是极具误导性的。“如果 Jonah 愿意在任何时候在公共平台上就动画的历史和完整性进行辩论，我很乐意奉陪，”她写道。
Brantz’s fans have applauded what they see as a stand against the onslaught of AI in the entertainment industry. A top commenter on Brantz’s first Instagram post wrote of how much they admired h Brantz 的粉丝们纷纷称赞她，认为她是在对抗娱乐业中 AI 的冲击。Brantz 第一条 Instagram 帖文下的一位热门评论者写道，他们是多么钦佩她……