To members of his synagogue, the voice broadcast over the speakers at Congregation Emanu El in Houston sounded exactly like that of Rabbi Josh Fixler.
At the same steady pace his congregation had become accustomed to, the voice delivered a sermon on what it meant to be a neighbor in the age of artificial intelligence. Then Rabbi Fixler took to the bimah himself.
“The sound you heard a moment ago may sound like my words,” he said. “But that wasn’t the case.”
The recording was created by what Rabbi Fixler called “Rabbi Bot,” an AI chatbot trained on his past sermons. The chatbot, created with the help of a data scientist, wrote the sermon, even delivering it in an AI version of its voice. During the remainder of the service, Rabbi Fixler intermittently asked Rabbi Bot questions out loud, which he promptly answered.
Rabbi Fixler is among a growing number of religious leaders who are experimenting with AI in their work, spurring an industry of faith-based technology companies that offer AI tools, from assistants capable of conducting theological research to ‘to chatbots that can help write sermons.
For centuries, new technologies have changed the way people worship, from radio in the 1920s to televisions in the 1950s and the Internet in the 1990s. Some proponents of AI in religious spaces are went even further, comparing the potential of AI – and the fears it arouses – to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.
Religious leaders have used AI to translate their live-streamed sermons in different languages in real time, and broadcast them to an international audience. Others have compared chatbots trained on tens of thousands of pages of Scripture to a fleet of newly trained seminary students, able to extract snippets on certain topics almost instantly.
But the ethical questions surrounding using generative AI for religious tasks have become more complex as the technology has improved, religious leaders say. Although most agree that using AI for tasks such as research or marketing is acceptable, other uses of the technology, such as sermon writing, are considered by some to be a step too far.
Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate a full service for his church as an experiment in 2023. He marketed it using robot posters, and the service attracted new, curious participants – “gaming types”. Mr Cooper said – who had never been to his congregation before.
The topic prompt he gave ChatGPT to generate various parts of the service was: “How can we recognize the truth in a world where AI blurs the truth?” ChatGPT offered a welcome message, a sermon, a children’s program and even a four-verse song, which was the group’s biggest hit, Mr. Cooper said. The song said:
As algorithms weave webs of lies
We raise our gaze to the endless skies
Where the teachings of Christ light our path
Dispelling the lies into the light of day
Mr. Cooper has since stopped using technology to write sermons, preferring to draw on his own experiences. But the presence of AI in faith spaces, he says, poses a larger question: Can God speak through AI?
“It’s a question that a lot of Christians online don’t like at all because it creates some fear,” Mr. Cooper said. “Maybe it’s for a good reason.” But I think it’s a valid question.
The impact of AI on religion and ethics has been a touchpoint for Pope Francis on several occasions, although he has not directly addressed the use of AI to help draft sermons.
Our humanity “allows us to look at things with the eyes of God, to see connections, situations, events and to discover their true meaning,” the pope said. said in a message at the beginning of last year. “Without this kind of wisdom, life becomes dull. »
He added: “Such wisdom cannot be sought from machines. »
Phil EuBank, pastor of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, likened AI to a “bionic arm” that could power his work. But when it comes to writing a sermon, “there is this Uncanny Valley territory,” he said, “where it can get you really close, but really close can be really strange. »
Rabbi Fixler agreed. He remembers being surprised when Rabbi Bot asked him to include a line about himself in his sermon on AI, a one-off experiment.
“Just as the Torah asks us to love our neighbor as ourselves,” Rabbi Bot said, “can we also extend this love and empathy to the AI entities we create?
Rabbis have always been the first to adopt new technologies, especially for books printed in the 15th century. But the divinity of these books lay in the spiritual relationship their readers had with God, said Rabbi Oren Hayon, who is also part of Congregation Emanu El.
To help him in his research, Rabbi Hayon regularly uses a personalized chatbot trained on 20 years of his own writings. But he never used AI to write portions of sermons.
“Our job is not just to compose pretty sentences,” Rabbi Hayon said. “It’s about, hopefully, writing something that is lyrical, moving and articulate, but also responds to the specifically human hungers, pains and losses that we are aware of because we are in human communities with other people.” He added: “It cannot be automated. »
Kenny Jahng, a tech entrepreneur, says fears about ministers’ use of generative AI are overblown, and it may even be necessary to rely on the technology to attract a new generation of keen young churchgoers. of technology when church attendance across the country is down. decline.
Mr. Jahng, editor of a book focused on faith and technology media company and founder of a AI educational platformtraveled the country last year speaking at conferences and promoting faith-based AI products. He also runs a Facebook group for tech-curious church leaders with over 6,000 members.
“We’re looking at data that the spiritually curious Generation Alpha, Gen Z, far outnumber Baby Boomers and Gen Xers who have left the church since Covid,” Mr. Jahng said. “It’s this perfect storm.”
Some churches have already begun subtly integrating AI into their services and websites.
The chatbot on the website of Father’s House, a church in Leesburg, Florida, for example, appears to offer standard customer service. Among his recommended questions: “What time are your services taking place?”
The next suggestion is more complex.
“Why are my prayers not being answered? »
The chatbot was created by Pastors.aia startup founded by Joe Suh, a tech entrepreneur and member of Mr. EuBank’s church in Silicon Valley.
After one of Mr. Suh’s longtime pastors left his church, he came up with the idea of uploading recordings of that pastor’s sermons to ChatGPT. Mr. Suh then asked the chatbot intimate questions about his faith. He turned the concept into a business.
Mr. Suh’s chatbots are trained using a church’s sermon archives and information from its website. But about 95% of people who use chatbots ask them about things like service hours rather than delving deeper into their spirituality, Suh said.
“I think that will eventually change, but for now this concept may be a little ahead of its time,” he added.
Critics of the use of AI by religious leaders have highlighted the problem of hallucinations – times when chatbots invent things. Although harmless in some situations, faith-based AI tools that fabricate religious scriptures present a serious problem. In Rabbi Bot’s sermon, for example, the AI invented a quote from the Jewish philosopher Maimonides that would have been considered authentic to the casual listener.
For other religious leaders, the AI question is simpler: How can sermon writers perfect their craft without doing it entirely themselves?
“I worry for pastors, in some ways, that it doesn’t help them build their sermon-writing muscles, and that’s where I think a lot of our great theology comes from and of our great sermons, years and years of preaching,” said Thomas Costello. , pastor at New Hope Hawaii Kai in Honolulu.
At his synagogue recently, Rabbi Hayon remembers taking a photo of his bookshelf and asking his AI assistant what books he hadn’t cited in his recent sermons. Before AI, he would have extracted the titles himself, taking the time to read their indexes, comparing them carefully to his own work.
“I was a little sad to miss this part of the process that is so fruitful, so joyful, so rich and illuminating, which nourishes the life of the Spirit,” Rabbi Hayon said. “Using AI allows you to get an answer faster, but you definitely lost something along the way.”