Christian content creators are outsourcing AI slop to gig workers on Fiverr

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. Christian content creators are outsourcing AI slop to gig workers on Fiverr Demand for AI-generated Bible content is high. Christian content creators are outsourcing AI slop to gig workers on Fiverr Demand for AI-generated Bible content is high. 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…