Rambling Thoughts on AI From a Creative Christian

Artificial intelligence is powerful. You can save yourself or your creative team hours of work a week utilizing AI to create your ministry’s podcast. Audio cleaned up in seconds. Show notes written in the blinked of an eye. Recording schedules coordinated faster than a fart.

But with great power, comes great responsibility. As Christians, what is our responsibility when it comes to AI? This is a question I’m still exploring myself. Here are my thoughts so far.

Spiritual Formation

How can or will AI shape our view of God and each others? I don’t think AI is a graven image but like anything that takes priority over God, it can be an idol. What is the first thing we turn to in the unknown? Do we pray or will we go to ChatGPT first?

People are flocking to AI chat bots for answers (mainly because company’s are adding them). We’ve already been asking Alexa and Siri for the facts and random bits of information. But younger generations will be asking them deeper questions as they get older. Instead of getting a “Here’s what I found,” they’ll actually respond with the answer. Hopefully, it will cite a source. Hopefully, it will lead them back to a human.

I’m not saying we can’t learn from AI. But our faith is realized, brought forth from our brain to our hands, with other humans. Other’s made in the image of God. That’s where the nuance comes in.

One thing I’ve been learning from listening to BibleProject is scripture is meant to be communal literature. It was written with the intent of being read aloud. Certain topics were left in gray areas to instigate discussion and reflection. We need other people to develop our faith and take our faith into action.

The Pastors.ai tool from my last article intrigued me. Train a chat bot on your church’s content and it doesn’t just spit out an answer but leads the asker to further resources, sermons, articles, etc. which contain the answer. If only it could schedule a visit to the church in real life…

On the flipside, you might be wondering: will bad actors use AI to deceive the church? Absolutely. The moniker for proof was “Seeing is believing.” That’s not the case so much anymore. With AI, pictures, voices, and videos can all be faked with surprising accuracy and speed nowadays. Just look at what OpenAI is working on with video. Intel developed a deep fake detection software for use with Zoom and other web conferencing to give government officials more confidence they’re talking to the real person. And still, it’s only like 96% accurate.

There are going to be people who use AI to try and slander pastors. It’s inevitable. While there will be hate videos of the pastors dressed in red, spewing the opposite of what they believe, the most damaging will be subtle. It will be nudges and rumors of misinformation leading to general distrust of pastors and the church.

A shaky iPhone camera video of John Maxwell smoking a joint, a voice memo of Steven Furtick questioning the trinity, or other false evidences of misconduct. There is nothing Satan would love more than exhausted pastors, constantly forced to defend their reputation online or in court.

So what can we do? We need to be on guard. We need to seek wisdom. We need to be educated church members on how AI works and how to spot it. Perhaps we all need to be a bit more like Thomas at times; to feel the wounds on our savior’s side before we believe (John 20:24-29).

Creative Process

How will AI affect the creative process? I think we can all agree art, media, and creative works has been a vibrant force for the Gospel. The Chosen has brought the words on the page to reality for so many people. Whenever I watch a BibleProject animation involving Jesus reaching down to help the lowly, I get teary eyed. The right song at the right time has saved people’s lives and given them hope for one more day. Media can help us understand complex topics, elicit emotions, and inspire action.

And the process of creating media, is an invitation for the Holy Spirit to fill you up. The first mention of someone being filled with the Holy Spirit in scripture is through craftsman creating the Tabernacle (Exodus 31:30-35). Those intricate stone and wood carvings were a work of the Holy Spirit through human hands. If we try to use AI to completely replace people, we’re missing the point. Creation is an act of worship. Yes, the deadline is looming but the process is important. If we do the work with our own two hands, we have an opportunity for not just worshipful creation but Holy Spirit led creation.

I’m not saying don’t use AI in the process. I use it to create my graphics for this blog. It still takes time to get it spit out a decent image and then augment it make it just right, and then add any text that’s needed, and export it as a jpeg, and compress that jpeg so my webpages don’t take forever to load, and then upload that to the blog post. It shouldn’t be used to be replace fellow humans, AI should be filling the gaps. Heck, I’m sure if I had the money to hire a trained graphic designer, they’d be using AI to get a jump start.

That’s the biggest benefit I believe in the creative realm: pre-visualization. Think storyboarding, planning, scratch tracks, mock ups, etc. One of the biggest complaints freelancers have is what I call the Client Waffle. You deliver content and they go back and forth, and back and forth. 24 revisions later, the customer still doesn’t really know what they want. They should really learn what Craig Groshel calls GETMO. Stands for Good Enough to Move On. At some point the effort put in doesn’t make the thing significantly better, it just eats up your time.

But AI can help here. Artists can use AI to better understand the clients needs with visuals rather than just words. Because not everyone, pastors especially I think, has the language to be able to properly express to someone else the vision in their head for what something should look like. Non-artists can practice with AI by trying to get a certain picture, basically being forced to write exact descriptions. Artists could use AI to doodle concepts down for clients to see faster than ever before. AI can help get to the desired end point with less headache.

This could be the same for audio. Podcast editor takes the written intro and uses AI to voice it as a scratch pad, just to get timing down for background music or sound effects. Then whenever the host records, they just dub over the AI and everything’s lined up and ready to go.

Keep in mind that AI artwork in particular cannot be copyright according to a recent court ruling. It must be significantly augmented by a human. Some folks are fighting it, saying AI is their paintbrush. And this doesn’t even touch on audio or film I believe.

I think we need to be more transparent with viewers about using AI in our work. I appreciate that YouTube has recently added a labeling system for creators to mark their videos. For artists, transparency can be a marketing tool. Add a little sticker to your work saying “100% AI Free” or “AI Started, Artist Finished.” The goal being we’re not trying to hide or get one by the audience with how things are created (unlike the recent Barbie movie which boasted all practical effects in marketing and then then they CGI’d the behind the scenes to make it look like they didn’t use blue screens).

But let’s finish on a happy note: I think AI will allow creatives with all budgets to achieve higher ambition projects without burning the candle at both ends of the stick.

Anyways, thanks for reading. What are your thoughts on AI? Do you think you’ve been influence by it yet? Hit me up on Instagram or Discord to let me know.