To members of his synagogue, the voice that performed over the audio system of Congregation Emanu El in Houston sounded identical to Rabbi Josh Fixler’s.
In the identical regular rhythm his congregation had grown used to, the voice delivered a sermon about what it meant to be a neighbor within the age of synthetic intelligence. Then, Fixler took to the bimah himself.
“The audio you heard a second in the past could have gave the impression of my phrases,” he mentioned. “However they weren’t.”
The recording was created by what Fixler known as “Rabbi Bot,” an AI chatbot skilled on his previous sermons. The chatbot, created with the assistance of a knowledge scientist, wrote the sermon, even delivering it in an AI model of his voice. Throughout the remainder of the service, Fixler intermittently requested Rabbi Bot questions aloud, which it could promptly reply.
Fixler is amongst a rising variety of non secular leaders experimenting with AI of their work, spurring an trade of faith-based tech corporations that supply AI instruments, from assistants that may do theological analysis to chatbots that may assist write sermons.
For hundreds of years, new applied sciences have modified the methods folks worship, from the radio within the Twenties to tv units within the Nineteen Fifties and the web within the Nineteen Nineties. Some proponents of AI in non secular areas have gone again even additional, evaluating AI’s potential — and fears of it — to the invention of the printing press within the fifteenth century.
Spiritual leaders have used AI to translate their livestreamed sermons into totally different languages in actual time, blasting them out to worldwide audiences. Others have in contrast chatbots skilled on tens of hundreds of pages of Scripture to a fleet of newly skilled seminary college students, capable of pull excerpts about sure subjects almost instantaneously.
However the moral questions round utilizing generative AI for non secular duties have turn into extra difficult because the know-how has improved, non secular leaders say. Whereas most agree that utilizing AI for duties like analysis or advertising and marketing is appropriate, different makes use of for the know-how, like sermon writing, are seen by some as a step too far.
Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate a whole service for his church as an experiment in 2023. He marketed it utilizing posters of robots, and the service drew in some curious new attendees — “gamer sorts,” Cooper mentioned — who had by no means earlier than been to his congregation.
The thematic immediate he gave ChatGPT to generate numerous elements of the service was: “How can we acknowledge fact in a world the place AI blurs the reality?” ChatGPT got here up with a welcome message, a sermon, a youngsters’s program and even a four-verse track, which was the most important hit of the bunch, Cooper mentioned. The track went:
As algorithms spin webs of lies
We elevate our gaze to the countless skies
The place Christ’s teachings illuminate our manner
Dispelling falsehoods with the sunshine of day
Cooper has not since used the know-how to assist write sermons, preferring to attract as a substitute from his personal experiences. However the presence of AI in faith-based areas, he mentioned, poses a bigger query: Can God communicate via AI?
“That’s a query a variety of Christians on-line don’t like in any respect as a result of it brings up some concern,” Cooper mentioned. “It might be for good cause. However I feel it’s a worthy query.”
The affect of AI on faith and ethics has been a contact level for Pope Francis on a number of events, although he has in a roundabout way addressed utilizing AI to assist write sermons.
Our humanity “permits us to take a look at issues with God’s eyes, to see connections, conditions, occasions and to uncover their actual that means,” the pope mentioned in a message early final 12 months. “With out this sort of knowledge, life turns into bland.”
He added, “Such knowledge can’t be sought from machines.”
Phil EuBank, a pastor at Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, in contrast AI to a “bionic arm” that would supercharge his work. However on the subject of sermon writing, “there’s that Uncanny Valley territory,” he mentioned, “the place it might get you actually shut, however actually shut may be actually bizarre.”
Fixler agreed. He recalled being shocked when Rabbi Bot requested him to incorporate in his AI sermon, a one-time experiment, a line about itself.
“Simply because the Torah instructs us to like our neighbors as ourselves,” Rabbi Bot mentioned, “can we additionally prolong this love and empathy to the AI entities we create?”
Rabbis have traditionally been early adopters of recent applied sciences, particularly for printed books within the fifteenth century. However the divinity of these books was within the non secular relationship that their readers had with God, mentioned Rabbi Oren Hayon, who can be part of Congregation Emanu El.
To help his analysis, Hayon repeatedly makes use of a customized chatbot skilled on 20 years of his personal writings. However he has by no means used AI to jot down parts of sermons.
“Our job is not only to place fairly sentences collectively,” Hayon mentioned. “It’s to hopefully write one thing that’s lyrical and shifting and articulate, but additionally responds to the uniquely human hungers and pains and losses that we’re conscious of as a result of we’re in human communities with different folks.” He added, “It may possibly’t be automated.”
Kenny Jahng, a tech entrepreneur, believes that fears about ministers’ utilizing generative AI are overblown, and that leaning into the know-how could even be essential to attraction to a brand new era of younger, tech-savvy churchgoers when church attendance throughout the nation is in decline.
Jahng, the editor-in-chief of a faith- and tech-focused media firm and founding father of an AI training platform, has traveled the nation within the final 12 months to talk at conferences and promote faith-based AI merchandise. He additionally runs a Fb group for tech-curious church leaders with over 6,000 members.
“We’re taking a look at knowledge that the spiritually curious in Gen Alpha, Gen Z are a lot larger than boomers and Gen Xers which have left the church since COVID,” Jahng mentioned. “It’s this excellent storm.”
As of now, a majority of faith-based AI corporations cater to Christians and Jews, however customized chatbots for Muslims and Buddhists exist as effectively.
Some church buildings have already began to subtly infuse their providers and web sites with AI.
The chatbot on the web site of the Father’s Home, a church in Leesburg, Florida, as an illustration, seems to supply normal customer support. Amongst its beneficial questions: “What time are your providers?”
The subsequent suggestion is extra advanced.
“Why are my prayers not answered?”
The chatbot was created by Pastors.ai, a startup based by Joe Suh, a tech entrepreneur and attendee of EuBank’s church in Silicon Valley.
After certainly one of Suh’s longtime pastors left his church, he had the thought of importing recordings of that pastor’s sermons to ChatGPT. Suh would then ask the chatbot intimate questions on his religion. He turned the idea right into a enterprise.
Suh’s chatbots are skilled on archives of a church’s sermons and data from its web site. However round 95% of the individuals who use the chatbots ask them questions on issues like service occasions reasonably than probing deep into their spirituality, Suh mentioned.
“I feel that can ultimately change, however for now, that idea is likely to be slightly bit forward of its time,” he added.
Critics of AI use by non secular leaders have pointed to the problem of hallucinations — occasions when chatbots make stuff up. Whereas innocent in sure conditions, faith-based AI instruments that fabricate non secular scripture current a major problem. In Rabbi Bot’s sermon, as an illustration, the AI invented a quote from Jewish thinker Maimonides that may have handed as genuine to the informal listener.
For different non secular leaders, the problem of AI is an easier one: How can sermon writers hone their craft with out doing it totally themselves?
“I fear for pastors, in some methods, that it gained’t assist them stretch their sermon writing muscle tissues, which is the place I feel a lot of our nice theology and nice sermons come from, years and years of preaching,” mentioned Thomas Costello, a pastor at New Hope Hawaii Kai in Honolulu.
On a latest afternoon at his synagogue, Hayon recalled taking an image of his bookshelf and asking his AI assistant which of the books he had not quoted in his latest sermons. Earlier than AI, he would have pulled down the titles themselves, taking the time to learn via their indexes, fastidiously checking them towards his personal work.
“I used to be slightly unhappy to overlook that a part of the method that’s so fruitful and so joyful and wealthy and enlightening, that offers gas to the lifetime of the Spirit,” Hayon mentioned. “Utilizing AI does get you to a solution faster, however you’ve definitely misplaced one thing alongside the best way.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Occasions.
Uncover the Advantages of Our Subscription!
Keep knowledgeable with entry to our award-winning journalism.
Keep away from misinformation with trusted, correct reporting.
Make smarter choices with insights that matter.
Select your subscription bundle
