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Author and illustrator Loryn Brantz never imagined that a popular cartoon<\/a> character she created almost a decade ago would one day be the subject of an intellectual property<\/a> dispute involving BuzzFeed<\/a>, Amazon<\/a>\u2019s video streaming service, and generative artificial intelligence.<\/a> But that\u2019s exactly the situation she finds herself in today.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing said in good faith by managers and executives was followed through with,\u201d Brantz says of BuzzFeed, her former employer.<\/p>\n This week, Brantz shared an Instagram post<\/a> 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<\/em>, developed with AI tools. It\u2019s one of three new animated shows greenlit through the GenAI Creators\u2019 Fund, a joint initiative of Amazon<\/a> Web Services and Amazon MGM Studios.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an assault on artists everywhere,\u201d Brantz declared in her post.<\/p>\n The headlines announcing the project were a nightmare come true\u2014and 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\u2019s chairman and CEO after buying a majority stake<\/a> in the brand for $120 million, describing plans to leverage AI to turn BuzzFeed into a YouTube competitor.)<\/p>\n Brantz, currently an executive creative director for the YouTube<\/a> educator Ms. Rachel<\/em><\/a>, blasted BuzzFeed and Amazon for their plans to turn her character into a \u201csoulless AI puppet\u201d on Instagram. \u201cI encourage you to boycott BuzzFeed and any AI-produced or adjacent animation,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n Brantz began writing and illustrating for BuzzFeed in 2014, at the height of the outlet\u2019s 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 \u201cGood Advice Cupcake\u201d whose demeanor violently shifts as she suggests that \u201cwhen life gets you down, you gotta grab it by the balls\u2014and make life your bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe character is 100 percent based on my own personality as being someone who is aggressively optimistic and nearly pathologically positive,\u201d Brantz tells WIRED. \u201cIt was a way for me to yell motivational advice at people in a cute and humorous way.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally, Brantz had come up with Cuppy for a children\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom there, there was a lot of back and forth on how to move forward animating it as a webseries at BuzzFeed,\u201d Brantz recalls. Ultimately, BuzzFeed produced eight episodes of a Good Advice Cupcake<\/em> webseries, which ran through the summer of 2019. Topics included \u201cAdvice on Your Messy Life\u201d and \u201cAdvice on Coming Out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen this all happened, AI didn\u2019t even exist,\u201d Brantz says, noting that she would never have signed a contract allowing BuzzFeed to pursue further Cuppy material created with this now ubiquitous technology. \u201cIn 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,\u201d she says. Brantz left BuzzFeed for Ms. Rachel<\/em> in 2023 and continued to license her own character from the company for her content, including a Good Advice Cupcake<\/em> page on Instagram that has more than 2 million followers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n