AI is officially in the animation business, and Prime Video is leading the charge. Amazon MGM Studios and Amazon Web Services have jointly launched the GenAI Creators’ Fund, a new initiative that hands professional-grade AI production tools and funding to filmmakers who previously had no access to either.
The first results are three animated series that have been greenlit and heading to Prime Video are Punky Duck, Love, Diana Music Hunters, and Cupcake & Friends.
The three AI animated series coming to Prime Video
First up is Punky Duck, from Emmy winner Jorge R. Gutierrez, the filmmaker behind The Book of Life. The show drops a lovable punk duck and his best friend Smiley Cat into a wildly heightened Los Angeles, where they stumble through alien invasions, robot conspiracies, and giant monsters.
Then there’s Love, Diana Music Hunters, created by Albie Hecht, the former Nickelodeon president who gave the world SpongeBob SquarePants. It follows a band of K-pop musicians who travel through space to Planet Goo, where they must perform a concert to restore music and save alien lives. Diana, the character at its center, is reportedly the most-followed girl on YouTube.
Cupcake & Friends, from BuzzFeed Studios, centers on a cupcake and her crew facing the unexpected chaos of a sleepover. No release dates have been set for any of them.
Meet Project Nara, the AI platform making it all happen
Powering every one of these shows is Project Nara, Amazon MGM Studios’ purpose-built AI production platform running on AWS infrastructure.
The platform connects directly with industry-standard tools like Maya, Blender, Nuke, Unreal Engine, and Adobe Suite, and routes each task to whichever AI model handles it best.
Amazon reportedly gave creators just five weeks to deliver their pilots, which tells you how fast this technology moves.
The studio also says that humans make every creative decision, with real actors and voice talent on every show. Whether that promise sticks as the technology scales up is yet to be seen.