Texas church uses ChatGPT to generate material for Sunday service – Chron
A pastor in Austin, Texas said he wanted to promote curiosity over fear towards AI among churchgoers.
Churchgoers at Violet Crown City Church in Austin, Texas received a perhaps first-of-its-kind service generated by ChatGPT Sunday morning.
According to the Houston Chronicle's Hana Ikramuddin, the church used the artificial intelligence-driven chatbot to create the content for the service. Pastor Jay Cooper told the Chronicle's Ikramuddin that the idea was to "explore artificial technology with curiosity as opposed to fear and to gain an understanding of how ChatGPT can impact faith and religious practices."
"Perhaps, in some way, if we can experience the sacred in something like artificial intelligence, then maybe we can see it in that neighbor who has political beliefs we just cannot stand," Cooper said during the opening of his sermon, per Ikramuddin.
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Since its launch in November, ChatGPT has sparked concern from experts, who warn that the chatbot's ability to create written material on any subject by drawing from what's already on the internet could cause the AI to amplify whatever biases are already prevalent online.
Cooper discussed the possibility that AI will be used to generate fake news content. "We're doing this not as some sort of gimmicky event or misguided attempt to be provocative," Cooper continued, adding that "the purpose of us gathering this morning is for us to wrestle with the nature of truth and also how do we see sacred in our world," according to Ikramuddin.
The church posted a link to video of the AI-generated service on its website, asking viewers to "consider what it means to find the sacred and receive truth in the midst of a time when most of us assume we will find neither."
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Michael Murney is a reporter at Chron and a reporting fellow with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He was previously a staff writer with the Dallas Observer and has written for Chicago’s South Side Weekly and the Chicago Reader.
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