Good Advice Cupcake Creator Slams BuzzFeed for Selling Character to Amazon
May 27, 2026
The creator of Cuppy, the star of the web series The Good Advice Cupcake, is calling out BuzzFeed for selling the character to Amazon for an AI-created animated series.
Loryn Brantz took to her Instagram, saying she’s “horrified and disgusted by BuzzFeed taking my character, The Good Advice Cupcake, and giving it to an AI platform.” Brantz initially developed Cuppy as a comic during her time at BuzzFeed before it was adapted into an animated web series by animator and voice actor Kyra Kupetsky.
“My time at BuzzFeed was marked by continually being taken advantage of and lied to,” she continued. “They repeatedly assured me in good faith that they would never do anything with Cuppy without my input, yet offered me no legal options, insisting that I would never need them. The news that this character, who is based on my own personality and whom I created as a microphone to spread love and positivity, has been taken and turned into a soulless AI puppet feels like having my intestines pulled out of my body.”
Brantz concluded, “Somebody leaked the news to me early on that there were talks happening, and I pleaded with the CEO Jonah Peretti directly not to do it. Instead, he tried to talk me into signing an NDA. Obviously, I did not. This is an assault on artists everywhere. I encourage you to boycott BuzzFeed and any AI-produced or adjacent animation.”
Earlier Wednesday, Amazon announced that it has greenlit three projects emerging from its GenAI Creators Fund, which will give filmmakers, digital creators and technology startups access to Amazon’s AI tools and funding to produce “high-quality cinematic entertainment.”
Cupcake & Friends from Buzzfeed Studios was among the three original animated series that will use Amazon’s Project Nara platform, a new production tool on Amazon Web Services that features AI tools.
Albert Cheng, head of AI Studios for Amazon MGM Studios, previously told The Hollywood Reporter of Project Nara, “What it tries to do is it streamlines and facilitates the end-to-end workflows of what we do, but also leverages the existing applications that professionals already know about.”
THR has reached out to Amazon and BuzzFeed for comment but did not hear back at the time of publication.
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