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Pastor who used AI for church service says it was a 'one-time deal': 'Let's never do that again'

FOX News

Violet Crown City Church Pastor Jay Cooper said that using AI to conduct a service at his church did not capture the essential elements required for Christian worship. After using AI software ChatGPT to compose an entire service at his Methodist church, Pastor Jay Cooper says he will not be doing that again. The pastor of Violet Crown City Church in Austin, Texas told Fox News Digital this week he found himself uncomfortable with how AI presented Sacred Scripture during the service last month, claiming it was not "spirit empowered" and did not have the "human element" through which God communicates to his congregation. "It can get relative real quickly. But then, you know, some of it was just goofy. It would make these odd jokes, these kinds of metaphors or things they would try to tie in just did not make any sense," Pastor Cooper told the outlet about the AI-generated service he held September 17.


Hear a good Sunday sermon? AI ready to make preacher's words count all week long

FOX News

'The Five' co-hosts discuss new AI bot ChatGPT and the impact artificial intelligence will have on future jobs. Church leaders and volunteers will soon have access to an artificial intelligence platform that aims to shave hours off their day-to-day tasks by generating content from sermons to engage fellow Christians when they are not in the pews. Upcoming platform Pulpit AI, founded by Michael Whittle, is expected to launch later this summer and will serve as a tool for Christian leaders looking to take the tedious work out of crafting religious blog posts, devotionals and prayer guides and social media posts. "We want to help pastors of small to medium-sized churches be able to make content for their congregations to interact with throughout the week and on social media," Whittle told Fox News Digital. "We think every pastor should, if they want, have a digital signal to their congregations beyond the sermon. "Most small to medium-sized churches have small or completely volunteer staff, so they have zero operational leverage when it comes to media and resources for their church," he added. "If we can help a church media team get past the blank page, we can not only save them crazy amounts of time, we can help every church become a resourcing church for their people." 'AI JESUS' TALKS DATING, RELATIONSHIPS, MORALS -- EVEN OFFERS VIDEO-GAMING TIPS A congregant reads a referred passage from her Bible during services at Highland Colony Baptist Church in Ridgeland, Mississippi, Nov. 29, 2020. Puplit AI "doesn't and never will" generate sermons, instead it serves as a tool where the user uploads a sermon or religious podcast in order to repurpose it into "social media highlights, blog posts, discussion questions, and the other content churches use to reach their congregations and communities day in and day out," Whittle said. "Pulpit AI analyzes long form audio and video, then repurposes that into various forms of content," Whittle said. "Pulpit AI's output is taken directly from the source material.


ChatGPT delivers sermon to packed German church, tells congregants not to fear death

FOX News

During an appearance on "The Ingraham Angle", Jimmy Failla shares his thoughts on the latest interesting development in the world of artificial intelligence. Hundreds attended a Protestant church service Friday in Germany generated almost entirely by artificial intelligence, with a sermon presented by the AI chatbot ChatGPT. The chatbot, which presented as a Black man with a beard above the altar of St. Paul's Church in Fürth, Bavaria, told the packed congregation not to fear death, according to the Associated Press. "Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year's convention of Protestants in Germany," the AI avatar said. The service, which was attended by more than 300 people, lasted 40 minutes and featured prayers and music in addition to the sermon.


ChatGPT is finding itself everywhere, now in houses of worship

FOX News

A New York Rabbi recently went viral for delivering a sermon written by ChatGPT to his congregation, causing many to question the humanity in such an act. Think of ChatGPT as a far more sophisticated version of Google. It's an AI language model designed to generate human-like responses to various questions, from recipes to historical context to computer code and much more in mere seconds. CLICK TO GET KURT'S CYBERGUY NEWSLETTER WITH QUICK TIPS, TECH REVIEWS, SECURITY ALERTS AND EASY HOW-TO'S TO MAKE YOU SMARTER It's surpassed the million-user marker in about a week of its introduction. For context, it took companies like Facebook several months to achieve the same success.


What does religion have to say about artificial intelligence? - Los Angeles Times

#artificialintelligence

Sometimes Rabbi Joshua Franklin knows exactly what he wants to talk about in his weekly Shabbat sermons -- other times, not so much. It was on one of those not-so-much days on a cold afternoon in late December that the spiritual leader of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons decided to turn to Artificial Intelligence. Franklin, 38, who has dark wavy hair and a friendly vibe, knew that OpenAI's new ChatGPT program could write sonnets in the style of Shakespeare and songs in the style of Taylor Swift. Now, he wondered if it could write a sermon in the style of a rabbi. So he gave it a prompt: "Write a sermon, in the voice of a rabbi, about 1,000 words, connecting the Torah portion this week with the idea of intimacy and vulnerability, quoting Brené Brown" -- the bestselling author and researcher known for her work on vulnerability, shame and empathy.


A sermon written by AI - are robotic rabbis next? - The Jerusalem Post

#artificialintelligence

New York Senior Rabbi Josh Franklin, of the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, surprised his congregation earlier this week by delivering a sermon written entirely by Artificial Intelligence (AI.) The rabbi used the ChatGPT chatbot, a free-to-access AI program launched in November of last year. After reading the AI-written piece, Rabbi Franklin asked his congregation to guess who had written the sermon. In response, the congregation incorrectly guessed that Rabbi Jonathan Sacks had written the piece. The rabbi then expressed fear over the advancement of AI.


Artificial Intelligence 'AI' and additional needs

#artificialintelligence

Something a little more unusual in this blog post as we are going to be exploring how Artificial Intelligence can be a tool that we can use to help and support people, of any age with additional needs or disabilities, in our churches. "Technology has changed the world, bringing knowledge within reach and expanding a range of opportunities. Persons with disabilities can benefit enormously from such advances, yet too many lack access to these essential tools…" So, has anything changed since then? And what does today's Artificial Intelligence, or'AI', offer as technological solutions for disabled people, particularly in our church settings? What can we learn about'AI' together, that can enable us to better serve and support disabled people in our church communities?


Opinion

#artificialintelligence

Ms. Kinstler is a doctoral candidate in rhetoric and has previously written about technology and culture. "Alexa, are we humans special among other living things?" One sunny day last June, I sat before my computer screen and posed this question to an Amazon device 800 miles away, in the Seattle home of an artificial intelligence researcher named Shanen Boettcher. But after some cajoling from Mr. Boettcher (Alexa was having trouble accessing a script that he had provided), she revised her response. "I believe that animals have souls, as do plants and even inanimate objects," she said. "But the divine essence of the human soul is what sets the human being above and apart. Mr. Boettcher, a former Microsoft general manager who is now pursuing a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and spirituality at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, asked me to rate Alexa's response on a scale from 1 to 7. I gave it a 3 -- I wasn't sure that we humans should be set "above and apart" from other ...


Robot priests more acceptable to Protestants than Catholics, says professor ZDNet

#artificialintelligence

Our faith in almost everything is being tested these days. Everything is instant, yet nothing seems real. The news is apparently as fake as people on the take. Yet we're desperate to believe in someone -- or even something -- that'll help give our lives meaning. For many -- though, perhaps, a dwindling number -- religion provides answers.


Gogglebox's vicar on faith, family and a lifelong love of video games

The Guardian

The Reverend Kate Bottley, possibly the most famous vicar in Britain thanks to her regular appearances on Gogglebox, seems to have a god-given gift for the 1983 arcade game Track & Field. She has just thrashed the Guardian's games editor Keith Stuart at the classic button-bashing sports sim. She takes the 100m sprint with ease, before breaking a record in the javelin. "That's it, I'm retiring undefeated," she declares to the small crowd that's gathered around her at the GameCity festival taking place at Nottingham's National Video Arcade (NVA). She walks away from the machine.