The four-year old “AI on the Lot” conference put on by LA-based group AI LA turned into the Amazon MGM show this week.
Not only was the conference welcomed onto the tech giant’s Culver City-based studio lot — (we were told last year’s conference was relegated to the Culver Theater, owned by Amazon, but outside the lot’s gates) — but the first half of the day was dominated by Amazon MGM and Amazon Web Services execs. Amazon publicists were even pulling double duty as on-site event coordinators helping to escort attendees onto the lot.
Amazon then showcased its recently launched AI Studios, led by longtime Prime Video and Amazon MGM studio exec Albert Cheng,** **who shifted into the role last September. Since then, not much has been known about the burgeoning studio-within-a-studio. That all changed in a fairly big way yesterday, when Amazon unveiled it’s backing an AI creator fund, along with corporate sibling AWS, to help bring AI-generated projects to life.
Amazon unveiled its first three AI projects, all animated: “Cupcake & Friends” from BuzzFeed Studios, “Love, Diana Music Hunters” from **Albie Hecht **(a former Nickelodeon exec) and “Punky Duck” from filmmaker **Jorge R. Gutierrez **(who compared using AI thusly: “It’s like having sex and then the baby comes”). After the showcase, which included snippets of the projects, Page Six Hollywood briefly caught up with Jessica Fan, the AI Studios’ animation chief, who was beaming about finally unveiling her division’s work after the “dribs and drabs” of the past eight months.
(Not everyone was pleased: Loryn Brantz, a former BuzzFeed creative director who came up with the character Cuppy — star of the web series “The Good Advice Cupcake” — slammed Amazon’s “Cupcake & Friends,” which is based on the character. On her Instagram, Brantz posted she was “horrified and disgusted by BuzzFeed taking my character, The Good Advice Cupcake, and giving it to an AI platform.” Jonah Peretti, the ex-BuzzFeed CEO who now runs its AI division, said they tried to work with Brantz, but she refused. “Her personal opposition to AI cannot determine how BuzzFeed develops IP that it owns,” he said in a statement.)
Amazon MGM staffers were also mingling between their day jobs, popping in to see some of the speakers (though one confused staffer wondered, “What is this?” upon seeing the event’s signage). Also in the crowd was famed “Taxi Driver” scribe Paul Schafer, who will give a keynote on Thursday.