Amazon is making its biggest push yet to bring generative AI into the entertainment pipeline.
Amazon MGM Studios and Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced the GenAI Creators’ Fund Wednesday at the “AI on the Lot” event at Culver Studios in Los Angeles, a joint initiative providing filmmakers, digital creators, and tech startups with funding and access to professional-grade AI production tools to develop high-quality cinematic content. The fund’s first greenlit projects are three animated series headed to Prime Video: Punky Duck from Maya and the Three and The Book of Life director Jorge R. Gutierrez, Love, Diana Music Hunters from former Nickelodeon president Albie Hecht at pocket.watch, and Cupcake & Friends from BuzzFeed Studios. Premiere dates have not been announced.
In Punky Duck, a lovable punk duck and his best friend Smiley Cat tear through a wildly exaggerated Los Angeles, stumbling into alien invasions, giant monsters, robot criminal conspiracies, and telenovela-style family drama while trying and usually failing to do the right thing. Love, Diana Music Hunters follows a young band of K-pop space-traveling musicians who race to Planet Goo to perform a concert that will restore music and save its alien inhabitants, based on Diana, the most-followed girl on YouTube. Cupcake & Friends centers on a relatable cupcake and her friends as they navigate the hilarious and unexpected twists of a sleepover.
Powering the initiative is Project Nara, Amazon MGM Studios’ purpose-built AI production platform developed on AWS. The collaborative workspace integrates AI production agents with professional tools creators already use, including Maya, Blender, Nuke, Unreal Engine, and Adobe Suite, while combining third-party video models with proprietary models trained on Amazon MGM Studios’ existing IP. The platform also features full provenance tracking for IP protection and is available exclusively to Amazon MGM Studios and creators selected for the fund.
“Creative breakthroughs happen when visionary storytellers are given access to transformative tools,” said Albert Cheng, Head of AI Studios at Amazon MGM Studios. “The GenAI Creators’ Fund and Project Nara position human creativity at the center of our efforts to integrate generative AI into our production processes.”
Cheng was quick to frame the initiative as human-first. “AI unlocks a lot of things that have always been cost prohibitive,” he said, adding that the technology allows productions to build out world-building shows or movies on a sound stage in significantly less time. The fund targets three distinct groups: established filmmakers, digital-native creators who have built large audiences but lacked access to professional tools, and startups developing AI-driven production solutions.
“Amazon has quietly and methodically assembled the only end-to-end AI content creation ecosystem in the industry,” said AWS GM of Media and Entertainment Samira Panah Bakhtiar, “spanning from infrastructure to creative tools to distribution and funding of creative content.”
The move comes as the broader entertainment industry accelerates its AI integration. Netflix earlier this year acquired AI filmmaking company InterPositive, founded by Ben Affleck, while YouTube recently unveiled tools allowing creators to remix content and insert themselves into other creators’ videos. Animation in particular is seen as ripe for disruption, with DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg predicting AI could cut the cost of animated feature films by as much as 90 percent.
Amazon says additional digital creator partnerships under the GenAI Creators’ Fund will be announced in the coming months.