内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/story/amazon-is-making-an-ai-animated-good-advice-cupcake-tv-show-its-original-creator-is-furious/

内容总结：

前BuzzFeed创作者公开谴责：IP遭AI“复活”变“没灵魂的木偶”

曾为BuzzFeed创作爆款漫画角色“Cuppy”的作家兼插画师洛琳·布兰茨近日公开控诉，称其近十年前创造的“励志纸杯蛋糕”形象，如今竟被前东家BuzzFeed授权给亚马逊Prime Video，计划使用生成式AI开发动画剧集。布兰茨在Instagram上怒斥此举是“对全体艺术家的侵犯”，并呼吁抵制BuzzFeed及任何AI生成的动画作品。

布兰茨回忆，她于2014年开始为BuzzFeed创作，2017年凭借性格“积极到病态”的Cuppy走红网络。该角色原计划用于儿童书籍，遭迪士尼出版部门拒绝后转为网络漫画，却在BuzzFeed推动下于2019年播出八集动画短片。布兰茨强调，自己离开BuzzFeed时曾被告知“不会在她不参与的情况下继续开发Cuppy”，如今却得知公司通过亚马逊与AWS联合发起的“GenAI创作者基金”将该IP投入AI动画制作，令她感到“信任被辜负”。

BuzzFeed方面回应称，公司合法拥有Cuppy的IP所有权，并强调“人类创造力仍将是核心，AI仅作为辅助工具”。前CEO乔纳·佩雷蒂试图以迪士尼曾使用复印技术制作动画为例，解释AI的“工具属性”，但布兰茨反驳称这种类比“极具误导性”，并拒绝签署保密协议。她透露，多名创作者曾被告知为Cuppy撰写AI剧本，而BuzzFeed从未主动与她沟通项目细节。

目前，布兰茨正在寻求法律途径，但坦言“不像往常那样乐观”。这场争议被外界视为创意行业在AI时代面临的典型困境：当IP版权归属企业而非创作者，技术迭代可能彻底背离原创者的艺术初衷。

中文翻译：

作家兼插画师洛琳·布兰茨从未想过，她近十年前创作的一个热门卡通角色，有朝一日会成为涉及BuzzFeed、亚马逊视频流媒体服务以及生成式人工智能的知识产权纠纷的焦点。但如今，她恰恰陷入了这样的境地。

“经理和高管们当初信誓旦旦说的话，没有一句兑现了，”布兰茨谈到她的前雇主BuzzFeed时说道。

本周，布兰茨在Instagram上发帖，公开抨击这家曾经风头无两的媒体品牌。她此举是为了回应一则消息：BuzzFeed已将她创作的“心灵鸡汤”纸杯蛋糕角色“卡比”授权给Prime Video，后者计划推出一部名为《卡比与朋友们》的剧集，并利用人工智能工具开发。这是通过“生成式AI创作者基金”获批的三部新动画片之一，该基金是亚马逊网络服务与亚马逊米高梅影业的合作项目。

“这是对所有艺术家的攻击，”布兰茨在帖子中声明。

宣布这个项目的头条新闻，如同一场噩梦成真——也是每个创意行业从业者在人工智能时代开始恐惧的场景。多年来频繁经历重组的数字媒体机构，似乎尤其容易促成这类交易。（媒体大亨拜伦·艾伦刚刚以1.2亿美元购得BuzzFeed的多数股权，成为其董事长兼首席执行官，并阐述了利用人工智能将BuzzFeed打造成YouTube竞争对手的计划。）

布兰茨曾是YouTube教育频道“瑞秋女士”的执行创意总监，她在Instagram上痛斥BuzzFeed和亚马逊计划将她的角色变成“没有灵魂的人工智能傀儡”。“我鼓励大家抵制BuzzFeed及任何由人工智能制作或与人工智能相关的动画作品，”她写道。

布兰茨于2014年开始为BuzzFeed撰稿和绘制插图，正值该媒体影响力的巅峰时期。她同时也在创作自己的书籍，并在个人社交媒体频道上发布原创内容。2017年，她凭借一部漫画在多个平台爆红，漫画中有一个拟人化且外表天真的“好建议纸杯蛋糕”，当它建议“当生活让你沮丧时，你得抓住它的要害——让生活成为你的奴仆”时，其神态突然变得激烈。

“这个角色百分之百基于我自己的个性——我是一个极度乐观、近乎病态积极的人，”布兰茨告诉《连线》杂志。“这是我用一种可爱又幽默的方式，向人们大声喊出励志建议的方法。”

最初，布兰茨是为了一本儿童读物而构思出卡比的。在迪士尼的一个出版部门否定了这个想法后，她将其带入了自己的网络漫画中。当它在社交媒体上火起来时，BuzzFeed看到了机会。

“从那时起，我们就如何将其制作成BuzzFeed的网络动画系列进行了很多反复讨论，”布兰茨回忆道。最终，BuzzFeed制作了八集《好建议纸杯蛋糕》网络系列片，在2019年整个夏季播出。主题包括“关于你一团糟的生活的建议”和“关于出柜的建议”。

“这一切发生的时候，人工智能甚至还不存在，”布兰茨说，并指出她绝不会签署允许BuzzFeed利用这种如今已无处不在的技术来制作更多卡比素材的合同。“最终，我信任了他们，尽管很天真——他们曾说，如果我离开，他们没有兴趣在没有我参与的情况下继续开发卡比，并且他们会尊重我对这个角色的创作意愿，”她说。布兰茨于2023年离开BuzzFeed，加入“瑞秋女士”团队，并继续从公司授权自己的角色用于个人内容，其中包括一个拥有超过200万粉丝的Instagram账号“好建议纸杯蛋糕”。

“BuzzFeed拥有卡比的知识产权，而不是前雇员洛琳，”一位BuzzFeed发言人告诉《连线》杂志。“BuzzFeed工作室很高兴能利用新技术，将一个沉寂已久的系列作品重新带回观众视野，赋予它新的生命，我们也很兴奋能与一支才华横溢的创作者团队合作，讲述新的故事。”

在提供给《连线》杂志的一份声明中，BuzzFeed人工智能总裁兼公司前首席执行官乔纳·佩雷蒂表示，他们曾试图向布兰茨保证新版卡比系列的艺术完整性。“我们向她表明，人类的创造力仍将是这个项目的核心——编剧、故事创作和动画制作由人类完成，人工智能则作为辅助创作的工具有助实现这一过程，”他说，并将此与迪士尼采用施乐技术来辅助动画制作过程相类比。

“然而，她明确表示，她无条件反对一切形式的人工智能，我们尊重她因此不想参与的决定，”佩雷蒂的声明继续说道。“这绝对是她的权利。但她个人对人工智能的反对，不能决定BuzzFeed如何开发其拥有的知识产权，也不能剥夺参与这个项目的其他众多才华横溢的创作者开展工作的机会。”

布兰茨表示，今年早些时候，在听到关于BuzzFeed与亚马逊动画交易的传言后，她联系了佩雷蒂，其他创作者也告诉她，有人曾就撰写卡比剧本一事接触过他们。她声称，只有在她签署保密协议后，对方才愿意透露该项目的更多细节。布兰茨拒绝了。

“与他们的声明相反，他们没有就这个项目联系过我，只是在我明确表示会闹出动静后，才提到要告诉我更多信息，”她说。“而我确实闹了。”

在针对佩雷蒂声明的一篇后续Instagram帖子中，布兰茨表示，BuzzFeed在描述人工智能将如何用于制作《卡比与朋友们》时故意含糊其辞，并质疑将人工智能等同于施乐技术是具有严重误导性的。“如果乔纳愿意在任何时候，在公开平台上就动画的历史和完整性进行辩论，我很乐意奉陪，”她写道。

布兰茨的粉丝们赞扬她，认为这是对娱乐业人工智能浪潮的一次挺身而出。在布兰茨第一篇Instagram帖子下，一位顶级评论者写道，他们非常钦佩她“公开此事所展现出的勇气和坦诚”。

她告诉《连线》杂志，她正在探索法律途径，但“并不像往常那样乐观”。

英文来源：

Author and illustrator Loryn Brantz never imagined that a popular cartoon character she created almost a decade ago would one day be the subject of an intellectual property dispute involving BuzzFeed, Amazon’s video streaming service, and generative artificial intelligence. But that’s exactly the situation she finds herself in today.
“Nothing said in good faith by managers and executives was followed through with,” Brantz says of BuzzFeed, her former employer.
This week, Brantz shared an Instagram post 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, developed with AI tools. It’s one of three new animated shows greenlit through the GenAI Creators’ Fund, a joint initiative of Amazon Web Services and Amazon MGM Studios.
“This is an assault on artists everywhere,” Brantz declared in her post.
The headlines announcing the project were a nightmare come true—and 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’s chairman and CEO after buying a majority stake in the brand for $120 million, describing plans to leverage AI to turn BuzzFeed into a YouTube competitor.)
Brantz, a former executive creative director for the YouTube educator Ms. Rachel, blasted BuzzFeed and Amazon for their plans to turn her character into a “soulless AI puppet” on Instagram. “I encourage you to boycott BuzzFeed and any AI-produced or adjacent animation,” she wrote.
Brantz began writing and illustrating for BuzzFeed in 2014, at the height of the outlet’s 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 “Good Advice Cupcake” whose demeanor violently shifts as she suggests that “when life gets you down, you gotta grab it by the balls—and make life your bitch.”
“The character is 100 percent based on my own personality as being someone who is aggressively optimistic and nearly pathologically positive,” Brantz tells WIRED. “It was a way for me to yell motivational advice at people in a cute and humorous way.”
Originally, Brantz had come up with Cuppy for a children’s 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.
“From there, there was a lot of back and forth on how to move forward animating it as a web series at BuzzFeed,” Brantz recalls. Ultimately, BuzzFeed produced eight episodes of a Good Advice Cupcake webseries, which ran through the summer of 2019. Topics included “Advice on Your Messy Life” and “Advice on Coming Out.”
“When this all happened, AI didn’t even exist,” Brantz says, noting that she would never have signed a contract allowing BuzzFeed to pursue further Cuppy material created with this now ubiquitous technology. “In 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,” she says. Brantz left BuzzFeed for Ms. Rachel in 2023 and continued to license her own character from the company for her content, including a Good Advice Cupcake page on Instagram that has more than 2 million followers.
“BuzzFeed owns the Cuppy IP, not Loryn, who is a former employee,” a BuzzFeed spokesperson tells WIRED. “BuzzFeed Studios is excited to use new technology to bring a dormant library series off the shelf and to give it new life, and we are thrilled to work with a talented team of creatives to tell new stories.”
In a statement shared with WIRED, Jonah Peretti, president of BuzzFeed AI and former CEO of the company, said they had tried to reassure Brantz about the artistic integrity of the new Cuppy series. “We shared with her that human creativity would remain at the core of this project, with writing, storytelling, and animation being developed by humans and AI being used as a creation tool to help facilitate that,” he said, drawing a comparison to Disney’s adoption of Xerox technology to facilitate the animation process.
“However, she made it clear that she was categorically opposed to the use of AI in all its forms, and we respected that she did not want to be involved as a result,” Peretti’s statement continued. “That is absolutely her right. But her personal opposition to AI cannot determine how BuzzFeed develops IP that it owns, or deny the many other talented creators involved in this project the opportunity to do their work.”
Brantz says she reached out to Peretti earlier this year, after hearing rumors about BuzzFeed’s animation deal with Amazon, and other creatives told her they had been approached about writing Cuppy scripts. She claims that he would only offer more details of the project if she signed a nondisclosure agreement. Brantz declined.
“Contrary to their statement, they did not contact me about this project and only mentioned telling me more after it became clear I would make a scene,” she says. “Which I am.”
In a follow-up Instagram post about Peretti’s statement, Brantz said that BuzzFeed was being deliberately vague in describing how AI would be used in the making of Cupcake & Friends and challenged the equating of AI with Xerox as deeply misleading. “If Jonah would like to debate the history and integrity of animation on a public platform at any time, I’m happy to oblige,” she wrote.
Brantz's fans have applauded what they see as a stand against the onslaught of AI in the entertainment industry. A top commenter on Brantz’s first Instagram post wrote of how much they admired her “courage and transparency in going public with this.”
She tells WIRED she is exploring legal options but is “not feeling as optimistic as usual.”