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Three animated bid person received orders by Prime Video via nan GenAI Creators’ Fund, a caller associated inaugural of Amazon Web Services and Amazon MGM Studios.
The projects are Cupcake & Friends from BuzzFeed Studios; Love, Diana Music Hunters from creator Albie Hecht, a erstwhile Nickelodeon exec who is now Chief Content Officer astatine pocket.watch; and Punky Duck from creator Jorge R. Gutierrez. All 3 bid will watercourse connected Prime Video down nan line.
The greenlights from nan money were revealed Wednesday, nan first time of nan AI connected nan Lot convention successful Los Angeles.
The creators’ money is designed to supply top-shelf AI devices and backing to creators from a scope of styles and backgrounds. The tech backbone of nan money is Project Nara, which is described arsenic Amazon MGM Studios’ “purpose-built AI accumulation level for cinematic storytelling,” built pinch AWS infrastructure.
Project Nara is utilized exclusively by Amazon MGM Studios and by creators selected for nan caller creators’ fund. In nan collaborative accumulation workspace, imaginative teams tin make video, make edits, supply feedback, and way advancement successful existent time.
“Creative breakthroughs hap erstwhile visionary storytellers are fixed entree to transformative tools,” said Albert Cheng, Head of AI Studios, Amazon MGM Studios. “The GenAI Creators’ Fund and Project Nara position quality productivity astatine nan halfway of our efforts to merge generative AI into our accumulation processes astatine Amazon MGM Studios. We’re proud of nan activity that these filmmakers person accomplished and look guardant to sharing these creators’ visions pinch nan world.”
Cheng, who had a agelong exec stint astatine Prime Video and anterior to that astatine Disney-ABC, shifted to his existent AI-focused role successful a restructuring past year.
As nan precocious concluded Cannes Film Festival showed, AI has started to go much wide embraced successful nan industry, peculiarly successful nan animation and ocular effects communities. Deals for caller contracts pinch studios and streamers reached by nan Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA person eased worries that this twelvemonth will not bring a repetition of nan AI-angst-fueled strikes of 2023.
The creators’ money is designed to support master filmmakers arsenic they create genAI workflows. It offers grants for proof-of-concepts and shorts from creators who person built ample audiences connected integer platforms but person not had entree to professional-grade accumulation tools. It besides gives startups that are building accumulation solutions entree to Amazon’s expertise.
In announcing nan projects, nan workplace and tech divisions of Amazon released little loglines. Cupcake & Friends is nan communicative of “a relatable cupcake and her friends” who look nan “hilarious and thrilling challenges of a sleepover, pinch unexpected twists astatine each corner.”
Love, Diana Music Hunters stems from pocket.watch creator partner Diana, who has a ample YouTube subscriber base. “This young set of K-pop space-traveling musicians races to Planet Goo, wherever they must execute a performance to reconstruct nan euphony and prevention nan aliens,” nan logline says.
Punky Duck creator Gutierrez is an Emmy victor whose credits see penning and directing animated feature The Book of Life for 20th Century Studios. He besides created El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera for Nickelodeon and Maya and nan Three for Netflix. His genAI bid follows “a lovable punk duck and his champion friend, Smiley Cat” arsenic they “tear done a wildly exaggerated Los Angeles, hilariously stumbling into alien invasions, elephantine monsters, robot criminal conspiracies, telenovela-style family drama, and supernatural mayhem—all while trying (and usually failing) to do nan correct thing.”
