In the beginning, platforms like Fiverr were places where people could hire freelancers to do specialized creative labor using skills that took years to develop. In the age of generative AI, though, many of these gig workers have embraced the technology in order to meet clients’ demands. These workers’ profiles emphasize that they can quickly (and cheaply) whip up images and videos of just about anything. But often, what their clients are looking for are dramatic animations inspired by the Christian Bible.

On TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook it is very easy to stumble across AI-generated clips that retell stories from the Bible. Like most AI slop, these videos tend to have an inconsistent aesthetic to them, and they’re narrated by mechanical-sounding voices. Rather than focusing on getting details from the Bible right, these videos cartoonishly emphasize emotions like fear and anger that are central to their simplified narratives. 

Some of the videos — whose visuals appear to be borrowed from Pixar projects — are clearly aimed at children, while others — which are more photorealistic — feel like they’re meant for older viewers. You can tell from the view counts that people are actually watching these things. But the creators rarely mention the fact that they outsource the videos’ production labor instead of making the content themselves.

It’s the opposite on Fiverr, where gig-seekers are open about their history of working on projects for other people’s social accounts. The platform — which committed to becoming an “AI-first” company last fall when it laid off 250 employees — allows people to upload clips of their previous work, and clients can provide comments about their satisfaction. And each of the Fiverr workers that I spoke with for this story said that, as much as some people might abhor AI video slop, the gigs keep rolling in. When you scroll through Fiverr, there are people all over the world looking for these jobs, but some of the highest-rated freelancers are based in Africa and South Asia. To a certain extent, that pattern mirrors the way that AI firms have historically outsourced their model training and data labeling labor abroad to keep costs down. But the freelancers I talked to all said that they see this kind of work as far less extractive on a personal level.

Dave, a Nigerian freelancer with a background in web development and UI / UX design, told me that he first got into video production a few years back as AI tools became more widely available to the public. Dave said that he’s always had a deep love for visually driven narratives, and tools like ChatGPT, Grok, and Leonardo AI gave him an easy way to become a professional storyteller. Fiverr, Dave said, gave him a way to turn his newly acquired skills into cash.

“I saw an opportunity in [using AI tools] because learning traditional animation would have taken too long and the resources were not really there for me,” Dave explained. “With Al, the learning curve was not as steep, so I was able to play around and figure things out as I went, and eventually I came to Fiverr to start selling the skill.”

Though Dave gets hired for other kinds of AI video projects, he said that he takes on Bible-focused gigs because “the demand is quite high” and there are a lot of people who “are trying to build YouTube channels in this niche.” The niche is relatively new with solid traffic, and Dave feels like some of his clients hire him because they “do not want to be left behind” as AI takes off. I heard similar things from Sherry, a Pakistani video editor who has generated religious videos for YouTubers and TikTok accounts in a variety of different styles. 

To my eye, Sherry’s AI videos did not seem all that distinct from what other Fiverr freelancers are offering because all of this content usually has That Look™ that’s become synonymous with slop. But when I asked Sherry why clients keep hiring them rather than just prompting up videos themselves, they insisted that doing this work requires a certain kind of expertise.

“I’ve developed strong prompt writing skills, along with an understanding of storytelling, timing, and visual composition, which helps me produce more polished and engaging videos,” Sherry told me. “I also handle the full process from concept to final edit, saving clients time and ensuring the content is professional, unique, and aligned with their goals. That combination of creativity, technical skill, and reliability is what sets my work apart.”

Workers like Sherry and Dave have given content brands like AI Bible a way of sourcing relatively cheap and fast labor that can be easily monetized online. Across different social media platforms, these pages have cultivated massive followings of people who engage with their content in earnest. You might think that more viewers would see this kind of treatment of the Bible as being somewhat sacrilegious. It definitely feels odd seeing biblical figures depicted as Instagram influencers recording videos of themselves with iPhones. But the comments sections are filled with people insisting that “Jesus would laugh at [these videos] too,” and praising the channels for spreading Christ’s message.

The overall visual similarity of these kinds of videos has a lot to do with the specific tools that people are using to make them. Ruaf, another Pakistani freelancer I spoke with via Zoom, walked me through his entire production workflow, which began with asking ChatGPT for ideas that could be turned into dialogue between characters from the Bible. He then used ChatGPT to turn that dialogue into a script broken into scenes. That script was sent over to ElevenLabs in order to generate an audio narration track and accompanying captions. And after asking ChatGPT to include things like camera directions and shot descriptions in the script, Ruaf fed each scene into Grok in order to generate visuals that could be edited together with the AI narration in CapCut.

Ruaf told me that there are many other freelancers using similar workflows for projects of their own. People in the AI community often share tips about how to deal with roadblocks like different platforms’ limits on how many generations users can make in a day. But when you look at the videos, you get the sense that their general uniformity is a byproduct of people taking the same general approach to making them.

The videos’ slop-y visuals don’t really seem to be an issue for the people commissioning them or the viewers — some of whom could very well be bots. And while this style of content comes across as at least a little bit blasphemous, the people cranking these things out aren’t concerned about that because there’s money to be made.

Under the guidance of consummate bully / chairman Brendan Carr, the FCC is taking steps toward cracking down on children’s entertainment that in any way explores the complexities of gender identity.

On Wednesday, the FCC’s Media Bureau announced that it is soliciting comments from the public about whether the TV ratings system has made sound decisions regarding children’s programming with transgender or nonbinary characters. In a statement about the commenting period the FCC said that it was soliciting feedback due to an alleged uptick in “significant concerns” about whether “controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents.”

“Specifically, the industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender non-binary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families,” the FCC explained.

On X, Carr echoed his organization’s general sentiments and claimed that parents are worried that “New York & Hollywood programmers” are pushing some sort of nefarious pro-transgender agenda. Carr also insisted that these shadowy programmers are undermining both the law and the ratings system that was established to protect children from unsuitable content.

All of the incoherent noise Carr’s FCC is making here reads transparently as an attempt at weaponizing the entertainment industry’s ratings system (which is voluntarily) in order to erase transgender and nonbinary people from the media. As Variety notes, the FCC is not directly in control of the ratings system, but it does have the ability to make judgements about whether the ratings board is operating effectively. 

The way Carr describes it, you could get the impression that the FCC has been overrun with complaints from parents about shows filled with explicit messages and images that aren’t appropriate for young viewers. But in a comment to Variety, the FCC’s sole Democratic commissioner Anna Gomez said that, per the FCC’s most recent annual report, there were “only 11 pieces of public correspondence relevant to the [TV ratings] board’s work, and spot checks turned up just two instances where a rating actually needed to be changed.”

“American families are worried about affordability, access and rising costs, not whether the TV ratings system has enough warnings about gender identity,” Gomez said.

The baselessness of these concerns becomes even more apparent when you look at some of the questions the FCC is asking people to consider, like whether the ratings board should include “additional faith-based organizations” and more “stakeholders outside of the entertainment industry.” Each of the FCC’s questions is posed in a way that implies the current ratings board is not actually acting in children’s best interest. And while the FCC hasn’t just explicitly stated that it doesn’t want trans and nonbinary people to be featured on screen at all, it’s easy to see how the organization might want to use this process to kick off a larger campaign designed to scale back queer representation.

What’s important to remember here is that, regardless of what kind of television shows or movies they watch, children who are transgender, nonbinary, and queer will always exist. Those children and their cisgender peers deserve to be exposed to stories about different kinds of gender expression because they reflect the realities of how people live and move through the world. Parents owe it to themselves and their kids to recognize that the Trump administration FCC is trying to play on people’s fears about children’s safety in order to push its own bigoted agenda. With any luck, this will all blow over until Carr decides to pick another target.

Though it’s very common for entertainment writers to describe some narrative elements of the films and shows that they’re covering, a Japanese court has determined that the practice can sometimes be tantamount to copyright infringement.

Last Thursday, the Tokyo District Court ruled that 39-year-old Wataru Takeuchi was guilty of violating Japanese law that prohibits the creation of “a new work by making creative modifications to the original while preserving its essential characteristics.” Takeuchi worked as administrator of a website that published lengthy, spoiler-heavy descriptions from popular movies and series. And two of Takeuchi’s “articles” — one about Godzilla Minus One and another focused on the Overlord anime adaptation — prompted Toho (owner of the Godzilla IP) and Kadokawa Shoten (the publisher behind Overlord) to file joint lawsuits through the Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA).

In a Japanese statement (which we’ve run through translation software) about the case, CODA described how Takeuchi and two other men were first arrested back in 2024 due to concerns about how posts on their “spoiler site” featured large chunks of transcribed dialog and numerous images. CODA acknowledged that fair use gives entertainment journalists the ability to publish some pieces of copyright material. But the organization argued that, because the website’s posts contained so much detail, they were essentially the same thing as adaptations that could cause “significant damage to rights holders” because of their potential to discourage would-be customers from paying to see the film / series.

“Numerous websites that extract text from movies and other content have been identified and are considered problematic as so-called ‘spoiler sites,’” CODA said. “While these actions tend to be perceived as less serious than piracy sites or illegal uploads that upload the content itself, they are clear copyright infringements that go beyond the scope of fair use and are serious crimes.”

As Tom’s Hardware notes, one of the more damning aspects of CODA’s argument was the fact that Takeuchi’s website ran ads on its posts, which meant that it was able to monetize the publication of copyrighted IP. Though Takeuchi reportedly did not write any of the infringing posts himself, in 2023 he was able to rake in 38 million Yen ($239,254.04) from the site’s ad sales. And now, he has been sentenced to a one year, six month stint in prison and ordered to pay a 1 million yen ($6,296.16) fine.

Even if you don’t buy CODA’s argument that looking at a combination of transcribed dialog, scene description, and press images is the same thing as seeing a movie, the court’s landmark decision is significant because of the way it’s tackling some of the thornier elements of modern entertainment coverage. Sites like Takeuchi’s are the products of an online media landscape where writers are fighting desperately to capture readers’ attention, make money, and keep traffic up as search engines make their content less discoverable. Brazenly posting spoilers under the guise of making commentary has become one of the more common ways that people try to drive engagement on their social media profiles. Just last week, the entirety of Paramount’s forthcoming The Legend of Aang: The Last Airbender leaked online, and people were quick to begin sharing it around. And at a time when many online fandoms seem more interested in consuming leaks / disseminating spoilers than meaningfully engaging with the art they supposedly love, sites like Takeuchi’s have a prime chance to thrive.

Though there are plenty of other publications like Takeuchi’s, CODA has said that it plans to “strive for the proper protection of copyrights and implement effective measures against similar websites.” The organization might not be able to fully stamp out this aspect of modern spoiler culture, but it’s sending a clear message to the public that these kinds of posts can come with big consequences.

In Manuel Gonzales’ 2013 short story “The Miniature Wife,” a woman starts to become a different kind of person after her husband accidentally shrinks her down to the size of a coffee mug. Because of her new stature, the woman is more physically vulnerable, and it’s difficult for her to effectively communicate with normal sized people. But for all the danger that the woman’s tininess puts her in, it also pushes her to tap into a strength that takes her husband by surprise.

The marital dynamics are very similar in Peacock’s new The Miniature Wife series adaptation starring Elizabeth Banks and Matthew Macfadyen. The show adds depth to both of its leads with commentary about tech bro chauvinism, and it spends more time with the wife’s interior thoughts. But like the short story, Peacock’s series emphasizes that mundane objects can be terrifying to a person who is just a few inches tall. And it fell to VFX supervisor Ashley Bernes to make The Miniature Wife’s world of ordinary things feel menacing.

Bernes spent months working with a team of artists figuring out just how to present the show’s core conceit in a way that was both fantastical and loosely grounded in real-world physics. When I spoke with Bernes recently, he told me that, while much of the show could have been entirely green-screened, he believed that the project could be made stronger by using a blend of practical, in-camera filmmaking trickery and complex VFX post-production. But to blend those two modes, Bernes knew that there needed to be strong communication between the show’s various creative teams long before cameras started rolling.

“There’s no case where those things aren’t critical, but with a project like this, there is no ‘fix it in post’ because it just can’t work like that,” Bernes said. “This is a show that has about 3,000 VFX shots, and we were working with up to five different VFX vendors at times.”

Though Lindy Littlejohn (Banks) is alarmed when she wakes up in a dollhouse after her husband Les (Macfadyen) shrinks her, it isn’t until she gets out into their full-sized living room that she starts to understand what kind of predicament she’s in. The carpeted floor is soft, but it’s a relatively long way down from the table Lindy finds herself on, and she knows that she would probably die if she were to fall while trying to climb down. 

To ease viewers into the show’s fantasy and its dark sense of humor, Bernes thought that it was important for Lindy’s dollhouse to be a fully realized set that Banks could physically interact with. And while VFX would be necessary to depict characters’ size differences, Bernes was keen on keeping the series from feeling like too much of a “CGI Fridays” situation. 

“When we’re inside the dollhouse, that is a real set that we built based on the dimensions and specs of a real toy,” Bernes told me. “We actually scanned objects from a real dollhouse, blew them up into a larger scale, and then had them made so that we could use life-size versions of these tiny things.”

As much as The Miniature Wife is a dramedy, it’s also punctuated by moments of action as Lindy escapes her dollhouse and ventures out into the larger world around her. She’s exhilarated when she realizes that she has the strength and know-how to make her way down onto the floor. But her feelings quickly turn to fear when she encounters everyday things like houseflies and her vacuuming robot — both of which are gargantuan from her miniscule perspective. 

Crafting those kinds of shots posed a series of challenges to Bernes and his team, who were committed to keeping the show from feeling like a straight rehash of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Marvel’s Ant-Man films. They wanted to make it so that viewers could always understand Lindy’s perspective in relation to their own, which required the crew to establish some hard artistic rules.

“We understand the premise that there is a miniaturization process that has happened, but how miniature is she?” Bernes explained. “Ultimately, we landed on a scale of 12:1 meaning that she is approximately 5.5-6 inches, and all of the props and sets were very regimented with this 12:1 scale. That’s a scale where things are still pretty recognizable. We’re seeing weaves in the fabric and oversized dust bunnies on the ground, but we still know what they are.”

Though there was an understanding that the scale rule could be bent a little in certain situations for dramatic effect, Bernes had to ground his work even further in reality for some of The Miniature Wife’s more action-heavy set pieces, like a scene involving her riding a toy train. Bernes told me that sequences like those are strong examples of how digital and practical effects can blend together to create visuals that are as fantastical as they are rooted in actual physics.

“The realities of this scale relationship makes it so that, in the big world of 1:1, when you move a camera one foot, that means you have to move it 12 feet in the small world,” Bernes said, describing how the train scene came together. “Now picture yourself tracking with a train. So we’re having to move hundreds and hundreds of feet at the same speed as the big world, which means 12 times faster.”

While crafting each of The Miniature Wife’s VFX shots was a huge undertaking, Bernes and his team chose not to use generative AI in the name of making things faster or more efficient. Bernes told me that even though he has used AI tools in the past on other projects and seen how it can be a valuable asset, he still thinks the technology isn’t suited to replace human creativity “because there’s too many steps in the process and too much control needed.”

“Is generative AI a tool that enables us to rapidly prototype ideas and then go to a more traditional visual effects vendor with a clearer idea of what we want to do?” Bernes said. “For sure. But there is not a single VFX frame in this show that was made with generative AI. This is all the result of artists and hundreds of visual effects workers putting things together themselves.”

The Miniature Wife premieres on Peacock on April 9th.

Correction, April 8th: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly referred to Manuel Gonzales’ The Miniature Wife as a book rather than a short story.

With The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Nintendo entered the next phase of its plan to become a different kind of entertainment giant. Though it wasn’t the company’s first go at putting its iconic plumbers on the big screen, the film demonstrated that Nintendo could collaborate with partners like Illumination to produce box office hits. The first movie supercharged game sales at a time when the original Switch was nearing the end of its life cycle. And with Nintendo also looking to drive interest in its theme park experiences, it was a foregone conclusion that another Mario feature was in the pipeline.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is more of a remixed reimagining than a straight adaptation of the 2007 Wii game it’s named for. The movie weaves elements from multiple Mario games together in a way that’s meant to light up the parts of your brain that activate when you’re experiencing intense nostalgia for something you love. This reference-forward approach makes for some visually stunning set pieces and a number of charming cameos. But there’s a by-the-numbers quality to The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s story that’s hard to ignore. And while that doesn’t keep the film from being enjoyable, it does make it seem like Nintendo might be too comfortable relying on its established moviemaking formulas.

Set some time after The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Galaxy sequel picks up the stories of plumber brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Day) as they settle into their new lives as world-hopping heroes. With Bowser now miniaturized and no longer posing an imminent threat to the Mushroom Kingdom, Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her confidant Toad (Keegan-Michael Key) know that their people are relatively safe. But with so many different emergencies popping off in locales near the Mushroom Kingdom, Peach relies on assistance from the Mario brothers and their new friend Yoshi (Donald Glover) so that she can focus on her duties as a ruler.

On the whole, things are pretty chill for Mario and his pals until Bowser’s bratty son Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie) breaks out of boarding school with a plan to free and bond with his father as they take over the entire galaxy. The key to Bowser Jr.’s scheme to build a “boomsday” weapon is Rosalina (Brie Larson) — an otherworldly princess with a magical power that connects her to the stars. And when Bowser Jr. manages to capture Rosalina, Peach and Toad take it upon themselves to free her while the Mario bros stay behind to mind the mushrooms.

Though returning co-directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic and writer Matthew Fogel once again give Mario and Luigi plenty of time in the spotlight with gorgeous action set pieces, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s focus on Peach is one of the big things that sets it apart from the last film. The new movie spends more time fleshing out the details of her mysterious backstory while introducing aspects of the character people know from the games, like her romantic relationship with Mario. And here, Peach is given more opportunities to shine as the centerpiece of some truly dazzling action set pieces, something that can often be missing from her video game exploits.

Peach and Toad’s interplanetary odyssey takes them to a variety of gorgeous new worlds that hardcore Mario fans will immediately recognize just from the way that composer Brian Tyler’s score morphs to allude to different Mario songs. But as much of Super Mario Galaxy’s gameplay as you’ll be able to recognize in the movie’s shots of Peach and Toad flying through space, you would be hard-pressed to call this a faithful adaptation of the game’s narrative. That disconnect made some sense for the last movie, which had to introduce us to all of these characters in a way that made sense on screen. Here, though, it feels like Nintendo’s piling on a few too many nods to different parts of the Mario franchise while not giving any single one of them enough time to properly breathe.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie feels busy as it introduces the Honey Queen (Issa Rae) and shady kingpin Wart (Luis Guzmán) while catching everyone up on what Yoshi’s whole deal is. There’s just a lot going on — some of which makes it seem like Nintendo’s using this project to hint at bigger things on the horizon. As fun as it is to see characters from other Nintendo franchises like Fox McCloud (a surprisingly excellent Glen Powell) show up, those cameos (there are a few the studio hasn’t revealed yet) and the way everyone brawls make it seem like Nintendo is more concerned with teasing a potential interconnected cinematic universe. That’s unfortunate because The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is strongest when it slows down to give its core characters new depth, and the time it spends bringing newcomers into the picture would have been much better used making sure that everyone felt more three-dimensional. 

As thin as the movie’s story is, it moves with a briskness that reminds you that this is very much a movie for people with short attention spans who can’t be bothered to sit in a theater for two-plus hours (read: children). But while that enthusiasm might be enough to turn The Super Mario Galaxy Movie into another $1 billion hit, Nintendo will probably need to take a different approach as it makes a name for itself in Hollywood — especially with a much more challenging adaptation on the horizon.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie also stars Kevin Michael Richardson, Juliet Jelenic, and Ed Skudder. The movie hits theaters on April 1st.