Pastor Who Used AI to Devise Sunday Service Warns Against its Continued Use: A Texas pastor who decided to use ChatGPT to devise an entire Sunday service as a “one-time experiment” has expressed reservations about repeating the experiment.
Last month, Violet Crown City Church in Austin, Texas led by pastor Jay Cooper held a Sunday service devised with ChatGPT, an AI chat program.
However, Speaking to Fox News Digital in a recent interview, Cooper expressed his discomfort with the AI-devised service not being “spirit empowered” since there was no “human element” required for God to connect with the crowd.
“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, and it just did not make any sense,” he said.
During the service, he informed his congregants that he had tasked ChatGPT with planning every detail of their worship service, from the order of prayers to the selection of songs and even commissioning it to write a new song related to the sermon.
Pastor Cooper emphasized that the primary objective was to evaluate whether AI could contribute to the spiritual aspect of a worship service rather than simply finding a more convenient way to worship.
“It was kind of twofold. One, I mean, I really believe that if it’s happening in the world, our people need to be very aware of it and not just have a loose understanding, but to have seen it in action, be able to speak intelligently about it because a lot of ethical concerns are going to be coming up here soon. And so to address these things head-on. Okay. So does this have any role in the church at all?”, he said.
“This is not like a Sunday off for God. We’re not doing this as kind of like a, you know, a bizarre stunt or something. It’s actually like a learning opportunity.”
“And, you know, how do we experience the sacred? So, is there any sacred at all in artificial intelligence? And that’s yet to be seen. Or is it possible that in some way, as believers, we can use this as a tool for the betterment of the world?” the pastor added.
Pastor Cooper explained that, although the church as a whole was satisfied with the experiment, they had no plans to repeat it. They have instead learned some important lessons and will ” try to discern how can this be used in ministry.”