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Todd Spangler
NY Digital Editor
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Amazon MGM Studios Amazon MGM Studios is touting the power of AI to help create “cinematic” entertainment in a big new initiative — although execs are quick to say it will empower human creative professionals, not replace them.
The studio announced the GenAI Creators’ Fund, which is providing funding and access to AI production tools to filmmakers, digital creators and tech startups for developing premium TV shows and movies. Amazon MGM Studios is teaming with sister organization Amazon Web Services (AWS) to launch what they claim will be the industry’s first purpose-built AI production platform for visual storytelling.
“The most important thing to remember is, we’re human-centric,” Albert Cheng, Amazon MGM Studios’ chief operating officer, told Variety. “AI tools are meant to empower human creativity, and allow TV shows and movies that would not have been possible before.”
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Under the GenAI Creators’ Fund, the studio has greenlit three animated series for Prime Video: “Punky Duck” from Jorge R. Gutierrez (director of “The Book of Life”); “Love, Diana Music Hunters” from Albie Hecht, chief content officer at pocket.watch (and the former president of Nickelodeon who developed “SpongeBob SquarePants”); and “Cupcake & Friends” from BuzzFeed Studios. All three series will premiere on Prime Video but no dates have been set yet.
The new initiative is being announced at the 2026 AI on the Lot event Wednesday at Culver Studios.
Cheng declined to say how much money recipients of Amazon’s GenAI Creators’ Fund will receive. The grants are for creators to make proof-of-concept pilots and shorts; the studio then decides which of those to greenlight into full projects. In addition to the animated series, Amazon MGM Studios is working with another creator developing a live-action short (whom Cheng declined to identify). In all the AI-enabled projects, the creators are working with human actors and voice actors, Cheng said.
The Amazon MGM-AWS AI production platform is dubbed Project Nara, which is being made available exclusively to creators picked for the GenAI Creators’ Fund. The companies describe Project Nara as a “collaborative workspace” designed for teams that integrates AI production agents with production tools creators already use (such as Maya, Blender, Nuke, Unreal Engine and Adobe’s suite of products). It is built around a “model-agnostic architecture,” meaning it combines the best available third-party video models with proprietary models. Project Nara also has “provenance tracking” to ensure the protection of intellectual property.
“One of the biggest complaints we hear from creators is: AI will not do what you want it to do,” Cheng said. Generative-AI video systems today are geared toward social media, he said, and “We are turning those models into usable tools for the industry.”
According to Cheng, Project Nara promises to reduce the total cost of productions and make them faster. With the three initial partners, Amazon gave them a deadline of five weeks to complete their pilots “to prove it can be done quickly,” Cheng said. Plus, he said, because directors can what a specific scene will look like earlier in the process (i.e., before the start of principal photography) they can make creative adjustments on-set.
What’s unique about Amazon’s approach is that it’s both a studio and a technology company, said Samira Panah Bakhtiar, GM of media and entertainment, games and sports for AWS.
“Amazon has quietly and methodically assembled the only end-to-end AI content creation ecosystem in the industry, spanning from infrastructure to creative tools to distribution and funding of creative content,” Bakhtiar said. “Project Nara illustrates how AWS can help filmmakers of all kinds bring AI to the full creative pipeline, from concept to screen, using a wide range of familiar models and tools on a cloud trusted by the entertainment industry.”
Here are the loglines of the projects Amazon MGM Studios of greenlit under then new AI fund:
- “Punky Duck”: A lovable punk duck and his best friend, Smiley Cat, tear through a wildly exaggerated Los Angeles, hilariously stumbling into alien invasions, giant monsters, robot criminal conspiracies, telenovela-style family drama and supernatural mayhem — all while trying (and usually failing) to do the right thing. Created by Jorge R. Gutierrez, writer-director of animated feature “The Book of Life” for 20th Century Studios and creator of “El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera” for Nickelodeon and “Maya and the Three” for Netflix.
- “Love, Diana Music Hunters”: Based on pocket.watch creator partner Diana, the most-followed girl on YouTube, a young band of K-pop space-traveling musicians races to Planet Goo, where they must perform a concert to restore the music and save the aliens. Created by Albie Hecht at pocket.watch.
- “Cupcake & Friends”: A relatable cupcake and her friends face the hilarious and thrilling challenges of a sleepover, with unexpected twists at every corner. Created by BuzzFeed Studios.
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