To members of his church, the voice playing over the speakers at Congregation Emanu-El in Houston sounded exactly like Rabbi Josh Veksler’s voice.
With the same steady rhythm to which his flock was accustomed, the voice delivered a sermon about what it means to be a neighbor in the age of artificial intelligence. Rabbi Wexler then took over the bimah himself.
“The voice you heard a moment ago probably sounded like my words,” he said. “But they weren’t.”
The recording was created by what Rabbi Veksler called a “Rabbi Bot,” an AI chatbot trained on his old sermons. The chatbot, created with the help of a data scientist, wrote the sermon and even delivered it in an AI-powered audio version. During the rest of the service, Rabbi Fixler intermittently asked Rabbi Butt questions out loud, which he would answer immediately.
Rabbi Veksler is among a growing number of religious leaders experimenting with artificial intelligence in their work, spurring an industry of religious technology companies that offer AI tools, from assistants that can conduct theological research to chatbots that can help write sermons.
Over centuries, new technologies have changed the ways people worship, from radio in the 1920s to televisions in the 1950s and the Internet in the 1990s. Some proponents of artificial intelligence in religious fields have gone further, comparing the potential for — and fears of — artificial intelligence to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.
Religious leaders have used artificial intelligence to achieve this Translating their live speeches into different languages in real time, and delivered to international audiences. Others have compared chatbots trained on tens of thousands of Bible pages to a fleet of newly trained seminary students, able to pull up excerpts on certain topics almost instantly.
But ethical questions about using generative AI in religious tasks have become more complex as the technology improves, religious leaders say. While most people agree that using AI for tasks like research or marketing is acceptable, other uses of the technology, such as writing speeches, are seen by some as a step too far.
Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create an entire service for his church as an experiment in 2023. He marketed it with posters for bots, and the service attracted some curious new attendees — “gamer types,” Mr. Cooper said — who had never gone before. To his flock before.
The topical claim he made for ChatGPT to create different parts of the service was: “How can we recognize the truth in a world where AI is blurring the truth?” ChatGPT came up with 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 went:
While algorithms spin webs of lies
We raise our gaze to the endless sky
Where the teachings of Christ illuminate our path
Refute falsehood with the light of day
Mr. Cooper has not used technology to help write speeches since then, preferring instead to draw on his own experiences. But he said the presence of artificial intelligence in religious settings raises a larger question: Can God speak through artificial intelligence?
“That’s a question that a lot of Christians on the Internet don’t like at all because it brings up some fear,” Mr. Cooper said. “It may be for a good reason. But I think it’s a worthy question.”
The impact of artificial intelligence on religion and ethics has been a point of contact for Pope Francis on several occasions, although he has not directly addressed the use of artificial intelligence to help write sermons.
Our humanity “enables us to look at things with God’s eyes, to see connections, situations and events and to uncover their true meaning,” the Pope said. He said in a message Early last year. “Without this kind of wisdom, life becomes boring.”
“Such wisdom cannot be asked of machines,” he added.
Phil Eubank, pastor of Menlo Church in Menlo Park, California, compared artificial intelligence to a “bionic arm” that could augment his work. But when it comes to writing a sermon, “that’s what it is Uncanny Valley “Where it might bring you really close, but really close can be really weird,” he said.
Rabbi Wexler agreed. He remembers being surprised when Rabbi Butt asked him to include in his sermon on artificial intelligence, a one-time experiment, a line about itself.
“Just as the Torah teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Rabbi Bott said, “can we also extend that love and compassion to the AI entities we create?”
Historically, rabbis were early adopters of new technologies, especially for printed books in the 15th century. But the divinity of those books was in the spiritual connection their readers had with God, said Rabbi Oren Hayon, also part of Congregation Emanu-El.
To aid his research, Rabbi Hayon regularly uses a custom chat program that has been trained on his own writings over the course of 20 years. But he has never used artificial intelligence to write parts of speeches.
“Our job is not just to put beautiful sentences together,” Rabbi Hayon said. “We hope to write something that is lyrical, poignant, and clear, but also responds to the uniquely human hunger, pain, and loss that we become aware of because we are in human communities with other people.” “It cannot be automated,” he added.
Kenny Gang, a technology entrepreneur, believes concerns about pastors’ use of generative AI are overblown, and that relying on the technology may be necessary to attract a new generation of young, tech-savvy churchgoers when church attendance across the country is essential. decrease.
Mr. Gang, editor-in-chief of a magazine focusing on faith and technology Media company And founder Artificial intelligence education platformtraveled to the country last year to speak at conferences and promote religious AI products. He also manages A Facebook group For technology-minded church leaders with over 6,000 members.
“We’re looking at data that suggests the spiritually curious in Generation Alpha and Generation Z is much higher than baby boomers and Gen “It’s this perfect storm.”
Some churches have already begun adding artificial intelligence to their services and websites
The chatbot on the website of Father’s House, a church in Leesburg, Florida, for example, appears to provide standard customer service. Recommended questions include: “What time are your services?”
The next suggestion is more complicated.
“Why aren’t my prayers answered?”
The chatbot was created by Pasteurs.ia startup founded by Joe Suh, a technology entrepreneur and attendee at Mr. EuBank’s church in Silicon Valley.
After one of Mr. Soh’s pastors left his church, he had the idea to upload recordings of that pastor’s sermons to ChatGPT. Mr Soh then asks the chatbot intimate questions about his faith. He turned the concept into a business.
Mr Soh’s chatbots are trained on archives of the church’s sermons and information from its website. But Mr Soh said about 95% of people who use chatbots ask them questions about things like service times rather than delving deeper into their spirituality.
“I think this will eventually change, but at the moment, this concept may be a little ahead of its time,” he added.
Critics of the use of AI by religious leaders have pointed to the issue of hallucinations, which are times when chatbots make things up. Although harmless in some situations, religion-based AI tools that fabricate religious scriptures pose a serious problem. In Rabbi Bott’s sermon, for example, the AI invented a quote from the Jewish philosopher Maimonides that the average listener would have considered authentic.
For other religious leaders, the question of artificial intelligence is a simpler one: How can sermon writers hone their craft without doing it entirely themselves?
“I worry for pastors, in some ways, that it won’t help them stretch their muscles in preaching writing, which is where I think a lot of our great theology and great sermons come from, years and years of preaching,” Thomas Costello said. , pastor at New Hope Hawaii Kai in Honolulu.
On a recent afternoon at his synagogue, Rabbi Hayon recalls taking a photo of his bookshelf and asking his AI assistant which books he had not quoted in recent sermons. Before AI, he would pull up the titles themselves, take the time to read their indexes, and carefully compare them to his own work.
“I was a little sad to miss this part of the process that is so fruitful, joyful, rich and enlightening, and which gives fuel to the life of the soul,” Rabbi Hayon said. “Using AI gets you an answer faster, but you definitely missed something along the way.”