Amazon’s AI Cupcake show sparks Brantz fury

Amazon’s AI-animated – Loryn Brantz says her “Good Advice Cupcake” character, Cuppy, was licensed to Amazon’s Prime Video for an AI-developed series without the safeguards she expected. She calls it an “assault on artists” and urges a boycott of BuzzFeed and AI-adjacent animation.

When Loryn Brantz saw the news that her advice-giving cupcake character was headed to Prime Video, her reaction wasn’t measured. It was angry.

Brantz—an author and illustrator who created the “Good Advice Cupcake” character Cuppy—took to Instagram this week to call out BuzzFeed and the deal that would put her character in a new animated series. “Cupcake & Friends. ” on Amazon’s streaming platform. Prime Video plans to release the show using AI tools. and Brantz says the way it was handled has left her furious.

“Nothing said in good faith by managers and executives was followed through with,” Brantz wrote in her Instagram post, directly challenging what she believed was promised by BuzzFeed.

In the same post, she went further, declaring: “This is an assault on artists everywhere.” She also urged fans to act: “I encourage you to boycott BuzzFeed and any AI-produced or adjacent animation.”

The announcement lands amid a broader push by Amazon to greenlight AI-driven animation. “Cupcake & Friends” is one of three new animated shows approved through the GenAI Creators’ Fund, a joint initiative of Amazon Web Services and Amazon MGM Studios.

Brantz isn’t just objecting to a generic idea of AI. She’s disputing the specifics of how her own work would be used. On Instagram, she blasted BuzzFeed and Amazon over plans she described as turning her character into a “soulless AI puppet.”

For readers who follow creative work closely, the anger has a familiar edge: media brands built on personalities and illustration can also be the ones most eager to automate what made them distinctive in the first place.

BuzzFeed’s ownership shift adds fuel to the wider backdrop. Media mogul Byron Allen became BuzzFeed’s chairman and CEO after buying a majority stake in the brand for $120 million. He said he planned to leverage AI to turn BuzzFeed into a YouTube competitor.

Brantz’s story starts years earlier, when BuzzFeed’s influence was at its height. She began writing and illustrating for BuzzFeed in 2014, but her most recognizable creation grew out of her own voice rather than an earlier commission.

In 2017. she went viral across multiple platforms with a comic featuring an anthropomorphic “Good Advice Cupcake” whose cheerful demeanor flips as it offers a brutal twist—when life gets you down. “you gotta grab it by the balls—and make life your bitch.” Brantz described the character as “100 percent based on my own personality as being someone who is aggressively optimistic and nearly pathologically positive. ” saying it let her deliver motivational advice in a cute. humorous way.

She had originally come up with Cuppy for a children’s book pitch. After a Disney publishing imprint passed on the idea, she brought it into internet comics. When the character took off on social media, BuzzFeed moved in.

Brantz recalls that there was “a lot of back and forth” over how to animate it as a web series at BuzzFeed. The outcome was a run of eight episodes of a Good Advice Cupcake web series that aired through the summer of 2019. The episodes included topics such as “Advice on Your Messy Life” and “Advice on Coming Out.”.

But what’s at the center of Brantz’s grievance now is the contract and the promises she says were made—especially around what would happen if she left.

“When this all happened. AI didn’t even exist. ” Brantz said. adding that she would never have signed a contract that allowed BuzzFeed to pursue further Cuppy material created with now-ubiquitous technology. She says she trusted BuzzFeed when. in her words. they told her they had “no interest in continuing Cuppy without me involved if I ever left. ” and that they would respect her creative wishes for the character.

Brantz left BuzzFeed for Ms. Rachel in 2023. After that, she continued licensing her own character from BuzzFeed for her content, including a Good Advice Cupcake page on Instagram with more than 2 million followers.

Now, with Prime Video preparing “Cupcake & Friends,” her dispute has landed exactly where the industry has been moving fast: the boundary between licensed IP and creative control—especially when AI tools are part of the production.

What Brantz is asking for is simple in language even if it’s complicated in practice: she believes the deal for Cuppy has drifted into a version of her work she says she never agreed to, and she wants fans and creators to push back.

Amazon Prime Video AI animation BuzzFeed intellectual property Loryn Brantz Good Advice Cupcake Cuppy GenAI Creators’ Fund Amazon Web Services Amazon MGM Studios Ms. Rachel digital media