“Shazam!” star Zachary Levi feels a biblical disaster looming, thanks to artificial intelligence.

On the “The George Janko Show” podcast, Levi compared AI to the great flood from the book of Genesis, saying, “I don’t think the flood is water. Honestly, I think the flood is AI.”

He continued, “We can talk all day long and wax philosophical about how do we save the industry from itself in the way that it treats people, or it doesn’t make great content or whatever. Guys, honestly like, t-minus two years from now, good luck finding any job, because the studios will have a technology … it’s already basically here.” 

Levi went on to give an example of audiences being able to generate their own movies thanks to AI technology.

WHAT IS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)?

“Imagine if you will, not only will every studio have possessed this technology, but then they’ll go to you and say, ‘Hey as a part of your HBO Max subscription you can pay ten extra dollars, and you get to use the creator sandbox, and in there, you can make your own movies. And you can type in anything that’s a Warner Brothers asset, so it can be Shazam and Batman and Neo from ‘The Matrix,’ and you can type in all these characters, and you want them to go on a treasure hunt on Mars and I want it to feel like a Stephen Spielberg movie, go.’ And then it will make that movie, and it will look indiscernible from human-made, in fact it will look amazing. And it will be entirely animated, but it will look like real life. This is where we’re about to be.”

The “Tangled” star mentioned that he is working on his own studio to stay ahead of the curve, saying, “Right now, the studio I’m trying to build feels very much like the ark that God was telling Noah, ‘You gotta go build this thing, because the flood is coming.’”

When asked by host George Janko why he wanted to continue working in entertainment if AI poses such a threat, Levi focused on the power of the human element.

“There should always be, hopefully will always be, a niche, at least a niche part of the entertainment industry where people are like, ‘I still want to go support humans making art. Human-made art.’” 

Levi predicted there will be AI tools available soon, allowing people to create their own movies with a few prompts. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

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He admitted that it will become a harder sell as AI advances.

“Like no matter how good AI-derived art becomes, it will become very, very, very, very good, and they’ll be cheap. Most people think, ‘Yeah, but I’m never going to want a computer-generated movie.’ If we’re being super-altruistic, obviously, but if a human-made movie still costs you twenty bucks, but for two bucks you can make a movie where you, by the way you get to scan your own face and your own voice and you get to be Superman or, better yet your kid gets to be Superman, and now you can shut them up for the next couple hours for two bucks and watch themselves be Superman in the movie, you are absolutely going to pay for that movie.” 

“I don’t think the flood is water. Honestly, I think the flood is AI.”

— Zachary Levi

The “Chuck” star also pointed out that he’s facing new competition from actors of the past whose likenesses may be signed away by their families. He explained a hypothetical situation where Gene Kelly’s descendants could sell the rights to the star’s likeness. “And then all of a sudden we’re going to get to watch Gene Kelly movies again. Like how insane! And again, I don’t want to support that, but are you kidding me?! . . . Like a new ‘Singing in the Rain’ sequel? I want to watch that, take my money!”

Levi’s example is not far off, as there have already been attempts to make a movie with an AI-resurrected James Dean, though none has been completed and released to date.

Levi said actors will soon be in serious competition with long-dead celebrities thanks to AI. (Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)

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Entertainment, of course, isn’t the only industry that will see the impact of AI, and Levi urged people to stay alert.

“I don’t want to be a doomsdayer, but I cannot stress this enough, please . . . wake up to AI. Please wake up to it. It is not, ‘Oh that’s fun,’ or some passing fad or whatever. It is going to replace so many jobs, and it’s going to happen way faster than you think it’s going to happen,” he said.

“There should always be, hopefully will always be, a niche, at least a niche part of the entertainment industry where people are like, ‘I still want to go support humans making art.”

— Zachary Levi

The 44-year-old continued, saying, “In the larger grand scheme of everything, as far as technology and progress, I’m a firm believer that you can’t stop it, you can only hope to guide it. So, we’re not going to stop this flood. We can only build levees and dams and channels and things to try to make sure we’re guiding it in the best possible way. There’s still going to be casualties, there’s still going to be a lot of people who get hurt in the process, unfortunately. But I think at the end of the day, we are moving into what is going to be a whole new world, legitimately.” 

The “Shazam!” star thinks AI will displace a lot of jobs, but hopefully open humans up to focus on “creation and discovery.”  (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

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“Ultimately, and this is part of the reason why I want to build, why I feel like I need to build the campus, or campuses plural if I can do multiple, is because I think that really, as humans, what we want to be focusing on are just, there’s two areas of vocation that mean anything anymore, moving into the future, and that’s creation and discovery.” 

He that added AI will still be a tool used in creation and discovery, but those two things are what “stimulates the human heart, mind, and soul, and I think as long as we really hold onto lots of places for people to work, because work is not just a matter of making income. Work is purpose. How many people retire, and they die just a few years after they retire, and why? Because they have nothing to do. They literally are sedentary, and we’re already sedentary a lot, and now they’re super-sedentary, and now they don’t have any purpose, and they die.”

Levi thinks AI will be a tool to help humans continue in creation and discovery, and allow people to still have purpose. (Jason Mendez/Getty Images)

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“I think it’s important, we must have purpose as we move into this new world, but I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s going to be like for everybody else in every other industry. And I don’t know for sure what’s going to happen in entertainment. I can guess, and my guess is, in very short order people, not just the studios but everyday human beings through the various catalogs of the studios, will have access to, by the way, not just make their own movies but TV shows, video games.”

New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick had a message for those who were on the fence about attending Super Bowl LIX next month in the wake of a terror attack in the city.

Kirkpatrick told Fox News contributor Ted Williams during “Fox & Friends” on Thursday that football fans should still plan on coming to the big game on Feb. 9.

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“They should plan on coming,” Kirkpatrick said. “Like the Sugar Bowl today will be held this afternoon. We here in New Orleans have proven time in and time out that we can provide safe environments. Look at Taylor Swift (concert) that was just a few weeks ago – incredible environment of fun, incredible environment where they can some and know they’re safe. We have plans.

“This is a terrorist. The terrorist is going to be hellbent no matter what, to create carnage and to destroy, but we as a city and as a law enforcement community have already proven over time that we can handle and manage these large crowds.”

Kirkpatrick vowed to correct any lapse in security in preparation for the NFL’s biggest day of the year.

Georgia fans at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Street. The Sugar Bowl CFP quarterfinal between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed after an attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025. (Geoff Burke-Imagn Images)

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“The Super Bowl is still in play,” she added. “We are going to harden our target. We will correct any kind of gaps that there have been – those will be corrected. And you will see today, you will experience today, what we can do.”

The NFL said it still believed fans would experience a safe Super Bowl.

“We are deeply saddened by the news of the devastating incident in New Orleans,” the NFL said in a statement on Wednesday.

“The NFL and the local host committee have been working collaboratively with local, state and federal agencies the past two years and have developed comprehensive security plans,” the statement continued. “We are confident attendees will have a safe and enjoyable Super Bowl experience.”

A state trooper walks to his vehicle at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Street. The Sugar Bowl CFP quarterfinal between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed after an attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025. (Geoff Burke-Imagn Images)

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The Superdome was the host of the Super Bowl after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Bomb-making materials were reportedly found at a New Orleans Airbnb, as authorities investigate a possible connection to the truck-ramming terror attack that killed at least 15 people and injured over 30 others on Bourbon Street during a New Year’s celebration. 

A small fire broke out at a suspected Airbnb property located in the 1300 block of Mandeville Street in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans around 5:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

The New Orleans Fire Department evacuated dozens of people from nearby homes and contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), FOX 8 reported. 

Bomb-making materials were discovered at the property, sources confirmed to the outlet.

SUSPECT IDENTIFIED AS FBI INVESTIGATES ACT OF TERRORISM AFTER BOURBON STREET ATTACK

“They said they found bomb-making material in the yellow house and wanted the bomb squad to look it over,” Bob Koenig, a neighbor, told FOX 8. 

Investigators suspect the Airbnb was rented by the now-deceased attacker, sources told The New Orleans Advocate. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the listed owner of the Airbnb rental but did not immediately hear back. 

Authorities investigate a home believed to be connected to the suspect in the deadly attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. A (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)

The FBI said it is investigating an “act of terrorism” after Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old U.S. citizen from Texas, drove a Ford pick-up truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers on Bourbon Street at approximately 3:15 a.m. local time. Jabbar exited the vehicle and fired on law enforcement, which returned fire, and the suspect was declared dead at the scene, according to the bureau. 

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Law enforcement outside a home believed to be connected to the suspect in the deadly attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025.  (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)

An ISIS flag, weapons and a potential improvised explosive device were found in the vehicle, and other IEDs were found in the French Quarter, the FBI confirmed. 

Jabbar enlisted in the U.S. Navy on Aug. 12, 2004, in Houston and was discharged from a delayed entry program one month later on Sept. 13, 2004, meaning he did not go on to serve, a U.S. Navy spokesperson told Fox News. 

The FBI is reportedly looking to track down associates of Jabbar who may have been involved in the attack. 

A bomb-sniffing dog is seen outside a home believed to be connected to the suspect in the deadly attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Louisiana on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025.  (Kat Ramirez for Fox News Digital)

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In Las Vegas, Nevada, early Wednesday, a Tesla Cybertruck loaded with firework mortars and camp fuel canisters exploded outside President-elect Trump’s hotel, killing the driver and sole occupant inside and injuring at least seven others nearby. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Chief Kevin McMahill told reporters that authorities “are absolutely investigating any connectivity to what happened in New Orleans as well as other attacks that have been occurring around the world.” 

The Georgia Bulldogs and Notre Dame Fighting Irish will play in the Sugar Bowl as part of the College Football Playoff quarterfinals on Thursday evening in the wake of a terror attack on Bourbon Street that left more than a dozen dead.

Sugar Bowl officials and lawmakers decided to postpone the game to 4 p.m. ET after it was set to be the final game of a three-game playoff slate on Wednesday. Both schools arrived in New Orleans on Sunday and were reportedly just blocks away from the carnage that struck the city.

Fans who came to the Big Easy scrambled to make their final plans with the game on hold.

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Lisa Borrelli, a 34-year-old Philadelphia resident and Notre Dame graduate, came to New Orleans with her fiancé to watch the Fighting Irish.

“We can’t get new flights,” she told The Associated Press, adding that she understood why officials postponed the game and that it was “absolutely the right call.”

Borrelli said they paid more than $250 per ticket and did not bother listing them on a third-party site because prices were so low. Early Thursday morning, tickets were going for as low as $26 on some sites.

“Of course we’re disappointed to miss it and to lose so much money on it, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter,” Borrelli said. “We’re fortunate enough that we’ll be fine.”

Darrell Huckaby, a 72-year-old Georgia resident, told the AP that he decided to return home on Thursday instead of staying for the game. He said he was in a room overlooking where the attack took place. He said he was asleep when it happened, but when he woke up, he saw blankets covering dead bodies.

Huckaby said he would “probably eat” the $360 per ticket he paid.

“It was heartbreaking,” he said. “I think the first instinct of most people this morning was wanting to be home. As important as football is to our Georgia culture, for a little while, the game just didn’t really seem to matter.

Fans line at the front desk of the Sheraton hotel after the Sugar Bowl CFP quarterfinal between Georgia and Notre Dame was postponed after an attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2025. (Geoff Burke-Imagn Images)

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“And I think there was a lot of uncertainty, and I understand,” Huckaby said. “It took them a long time to decide on the game time and people kind of had to make decisions without all the information.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told NBC News on Wednesday the game should be postponed to Friday.

“Not my decision, but I would like to see it delayed at least another day. If they asked my opinion, I would tell them that,” Murrill said. “I think that it was wise to delay it at least a day. This is an active crime scene, and they just finished removing some of the bodies, and they still haven’t removed all of them. I still think we need to wait an extra day.”

Georgia and Notre Dame players spent the day on lockdown, spending most of it in ballrooms going through meetings. Georgia players were bused to the Superdome for a walk-through practice on Wednesday evening.

Notre Dame players watched the Rose Bowl quarterfinal with their family. Notre Dame offered band members the option to fly home early and some chose to do so.

The terrorist attack left several injured, including a University of Georgia student.

“I am deeply saddened by the devastating attack in New Orleans overnight, and I extend my sincere condolences to the victims, their families, and all those affected by this terrible tragedy,” University of Georgia President Jere W. Morehead said in a statement.

Sugar Bowl fans from the University of Georgia and Notre Dame stop to take photos as New Orleans police and federal agents investigate a suspected terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year’s Day on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (Chris Granger/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

“At this point, we have learned that a University of Georgia student was critically injured in the attack and is receiving medical treatment. I have spoken to the student’s family and shared my concern, support and well wishes on behalf of the entire UGA community. I would like to express my gratitude to all the first responders who moved so quickly to help those affected by this senseless act of violence, as well as to the medical personnel who are caring for the injured.”

The University of Georgia Athletic Association and officials from Notre Dame said both schools had accounted for all team personnel and members of official travel parties.

Security will be heightened for the game. The security perimeter around the facility was being “extended to a larger zone,” New Orleans City Council President Helena Moreno told WDSU-TV before the game was postponed.

“There are more police officers who are coming in,” she said.

The Caesars Superdome is also the host site for Super Bowl LIX.

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The Superdome hosted the first Super Bowl after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The city beefed up security then as well, with officers, including snipers, on the tops of surrounding high-rise buildings, as well as on the roof of the dome.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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When he returns to office, President-elect Trump has the opportunity to fix the broken American health care system by doubling down on his first-term agenda of delivering price transparency for patients. 

Instead of protecting American patients, the Biden administration rescinded or failed to fully implement the very basic requirements that patients should know the cost of their treatment before they get it. 

By finally removing the veil between medical services and prices, Trump can empower patients to shop for the right care at the right price, avoid overcharges, and give employers and unions a better idea of the costs in advance so that they can optimally design health benefits. 

Recommitting to this reform should be at the top of Trump’s first 100-day agenda. 

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Trump’s 2019 executive order improving price and quality transparency in American health care and the resulting hospital and health insurance price transparency rules provided Americans with actual price information about their medical services for the first time. Patients finally have the same information that they do about the rest of the things they buy, spotting wide price variations of 10 times or more for the same care and shopping around for affordable services. 

Unfortunately, President Biden steadily undermined Trump’s transparency rules involving hospitals, insurers and prescription drugs. Hospital price transparency was the first implemented and should be the furthest along. 

While the current administration claims high compliance from hospitals, the information the hospitals include is often incomplete. In fact, a new study by PatientRightsAdvocate.org shows only 21.1% of hospitals nationwide are fully compliant and both posting their discounted cash prices and all the negotiated rates by health insurance company and plan. 

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The lackluster enforcement has likely contributed to compliance moving in the wrong direction: in February, 34.5% of hospitals were compliant, compared to 21.1% of hospitals found compliant this fall. The Biden administration has facilitated this noncompliance by refusing to enforce the rule, issuing only 15 fines on the thousands of noncompliant hospitals nationwide. 

The lack of enforcement is coupled with administrative actions which undermine these patient protections: The Biden administration has allowed hospitals to post price substitutes, including estimates, algorithms, and percentages, in lieu of actual prices. 

No consumer shops around checking algorithms or percentages – they need prices for health services like any other service they consume. Only actual prices allow consumers to choose the highest quality care at the lowest possible prices and unleash competition to reduce inflated costs.

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Estimates don’t hold hospitals accountable if they saddle patients with inflated final bills. And starting next year, the Biden administration will let hospitals continue to hide from transparency requirements so that hospitals only need to display a single type of charge instead of all negotiated rates required to shop.  

Continuing to neglect patients’ needs, the Biden administration has repeatedly delayed President Trump’s requirements for insurers to provide prices for prescription drugs and detailed costs to patients ahead of time through an Advanced Explanations of Benefits, which patients can use to compare their out-of-pocket costs.  

Trump can follow through on his first-term efforts by immediately strengthening and enforcing his price transparency rules upon taking office. 

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That means reversing the Biden administration’s rollbacks and delays to ensure that hospitals are required to publish actual prices in dollars and cents for all their services and insurers are sharing the information patients need to shop for prescription drugs and medical care. And it means consistently issuing financial penalties for noncompliance. 

Patients urgently need transparent prices. Under the opaque status quo, American health care costs have ballooned to 17.3% of the economy, almost twice the developed world average. More than 100 million Americans have medical debt, many of whom face financial ruin from bills whose underlying prices weren’t known. These challenges aggravate any attempts to improve American health.

These efforts aren’t just good for American health: A group of 32 bipartisan economists, including Arthur B. Laffer and Steve Forbes, recently sent a joint letter to Congress explaining how systemwide price transparency can redirect approximately $1 trillion annually from the unproductive health care industrial complex to the competitive economy, including worker wages and business earnings.

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A recent poll reveals 92% of Americans support health care price transparency. It’s clear Americans of all political backgrounds are sick of hidden health care costs and ensuing enormous bills that they could have avoided if prices were known in advance. 

President Trump can unite these Americans and burnish his legacy by making health care price transparency a reality and ushering in an affordable and accountable health care system. 

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EXCLUSIVE – Lee Greenwood and Sara Evans are releasing new songs with a surprise songwriter in the credits, the late President Ronald Reagan.

Reagan may have been busy running for president of the United States back in the 1970s and finishing out his tenure as California governor, but he still made time to co-write a few patriotic songs with record producer Mike Curb, the founder and chairman of Curb Records. 

Curb said that he met Reagan in 1974, his last year as governor, at an event for Junior Achievement, a charity that teaches students the concepts of free enterprise. The two hit it off and Reagan asked the songwriter if he wanted to help him in his campaign for president. 

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Curb credits brutal California traffic for giving him and Reagan plenty of time to write songs together in the ‘70s, starting with “Together, a New Beginning.”

“And so back in the ’70s, there’s so much traffic in California that I used to travel with them,” Curb told Fox News Digital. “And on several occasions, we wrote songs together. One of them was the theme for the convention in 1980 that played. It was called, ‘Together, a New Beginning’… several of our recording artists came to the convention. It was in Detroit that year… And then that song was sung at the convention.”

Reagan lost the Republican nomination to Gerald Ford in 1976, but Curb said he channeled his disappointment into writing more music.

“And then, we wrote a song called “God Has a Greater Plan” after he lost the election in ’76,” Curb shared. “He was a little down and didn’t think he would run again. And I said to him, ‘God has a greater plan.’ And he said, ‘Oh, that’s what Nancy says,’ and then we wrote a song called ‘God as a Greater Plan’… And then we wrote a third song, ‘We Can Begin the World Over Again,” which was all his lyrics.” 

Many years later, producer Mark Joseph played it for Lee Greenwood, who decided to fix it up and change it to, “Let’s Start the World Over Again.”

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Greenwood recalled that memorable conversation.

“He said, ‘Ronald Reagan and Mike Curb tried to write a song,’” Greenwood told Fox News Digital. “And he sent it to me, and he said, ‘It really isn’t – it was never completed.’ The idea was to make the world over, and how naive that is, but what a beautiful thought that is.” 

“And I knew Ronald Reagan quite well, I knew Mike Curb pretty well – I was on his label for a while, and it gave me a chance to redo the song,” Greenwood continued. “And I redid the song for them, they loved it. I recorded the version, and it should be released shortly on their aftermarket album from the ‘Reagan’ film.”

Dennis Quaid in character as Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office. (Noah “Nanea” Hamilton/Rawhide Pictures)

Greenwood wrote the new song, but said he kept some specific lyrics, including the phrase “beacon of freedom.”  

The “Proud to Be an American” singer told The Tennessean that he blended Reagan’s “altruism” and Curb’s “visionary” tendencies alongside a desire to reframe the song as being specifically tied to his awareness of Reagan’s legacy and the many conversations they had about “how much he believed in the United States as the greatest symbol in the world for freedom.”

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“These songs remind many generations of what (we fondly) recall of the ‘good old days’ in American society,” Curb said of the song. “In honestly reflecting what Reagan was at his core as an entertainer and centrist-focused, responsible, good and fair human being who was easy to get along with.”

Asked if he was surprised by Reagan’s songwriting skills, Curb pointed out that before Reagan went into politics, he spent years as a Hollywood star. In the course of his career, Reagan acted or starred in over 50 movies. He was the subject of the 2024 biopic “Reagan,” with Dennis Quaid portraying the 40th president.

Singer and songwriter Lee Greenwood. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“He was an amazing guy,” Curb said. “Because, you know, when you’re sitting in the back seat with him, it was like you were sitting with your next-door neighbor. Very down to Earth. I think all my friends, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, they kind of look back at Reagan as the good old days.”

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“Start the World Over Again” will be released soon, while country singer Sara Evans is expected to release her recording of “God Has a Greater Plan.”

Fox News Digital’s Hannah Lambert contributed to this report.

One person was likely on “Santa’s nice list” after dropping a special coin into a Salvation Army donation kettle on Christmas Eve.

Local Salvation Army staff in Washington, Pennsylvania, were collecting donations with their Red Kettles in front of a Giant Eagle grocery store. 

A generous donor dropped in a gold coin wrapped in a dollar bill that had been taped up with a note saying that he or she wanted to remain anonymous.

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A Salvation Army spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the coin was stamped with Queen Elizabeth the II’s potrait and is worth more than $2,700.

“Increased foot traffic around the holidays is critical for The Red Kettle campaign,” said the spokesperson.

The Red Kettles raised an average of $2.7 million each day last holiday season.

“In fact, during a typical year, nearly half of the donations that The Salvation Army receives (including donations to Red Kettles) come from October through December,” the spokesperson added.

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David Zanca, senior portfolio manager of Louisiana-based Blanchard & Co., an American investment firm that specializes in rare coins, told Fox News Digital that the coin is a one-ounce, Canadian gold maple leaf. 

“Canadian gold maple leaf coins are fairly popular with investors as a way to buy gold bullion. Gold bullion pieces are those that are primarily valued for their gold content,” said Zanca.

The Red Kettles raised an average of $2.7 million each day last holiday season. (Mark Rightmire/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)

The coin is dated 1987 with an engraved inscription. 

“Assuming the person bought the coin in 1987, they would have paid an average price that year of $520. That’s over 500% difference from the 1987 value,” said Zanca, adding that the donation is “great” for the Salvation Army.

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“One of the interesting aspects of gold coins is that they can be gifted/donated in a private manner,” said Zanca. 

“God bless the person that chose to donate the gold coin to the Salvation Army not just because of the size of the donation. But, because it calls us now, at the start of a new year, to focus on and discuss kindness,” he added.

“The funds that come from the coin will go directly back into the local community to help provide critical social services for individuals and families throughout 2025,” said the Salvation Army spokesperson. (Brian Hayes, Lucky Duck Foundation)

This is not the first time the Salvation Army has received a gold coin in one of its kettles, as in the last four years the organization has literally struck gold across the U.S.

Two South African Krugerrands were donated in Naples, California, and Canton, Michigan.

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In Farming Hills, Michigan, two sovereign coins were dropped in along with a 10-ruble coin.

A gold coin worth $3,000 was found in a kettle in Monmouth, Oregon.

“The funds that come from the coin will go directly back into the local community to help provide critical social services for individuals and families throughout 2025,” said the Salvation Army spokesperson.

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Services such as alcohol/substance abuse recovery, clothing assistance, rent/mortgage/utility assistance, school supplies and more will be helped thanks to the coins.