The Intersection of Faith & Technology

Over the past year and a half, it seems that new astounding breakthroughs in AI are coming more and more frequently. In late 2022, OpenAI announced that GPT 4 performed at the 88^th percentile on the LSAT. In addition, “prompt-to-video” companies like Pika Labs, Alibaba Emo, Sora showed us the creation of compelling short videos was in the hands of anyone who could write a descriptive sentence. Interestingly, a number of these AI companies also provided “spiritual life” application examples in their demos and ads. Pika Labs showed a “dolly out” video of Jesus in the Last Supper. Speechify played a clip of an AI-voice of Snoop Dogg reading the Bible.

In an age where technology permeates every aspect of our lives, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a transformative force, reshaping industries, social interactions, and even the way we perceive intelligence itself. Its reach has extended into the realm of spirituality and religion, prompting both excitement and apprehension within faith communities.

My colleague Grant Demeter wrote a detailed overview of the $130B FaithTech market where he introduced companies like Ministry Brands, Hallow, Gloo, and other services geared towards serving individuals and faith-based organizations from a venture capital perspective. This blog post seeks to extend the discussion and explore the meaningful intersection of AI with faith and practice, examining 10 modern AI technologies and related startups that could be repurposed for our spiritual lives.

This content can also be used to understand the latest range of AI technologies that are being applied to media and content today, with some creative real-world examples of usage. I reference examples from Christianity and the Bible in this article, but applications obviously extend to other religions and texts.

The Forefront of AI and Spirituality

The integration of AI into various aspects of content creation and distribution is transforming the way we engage with media, not just in the realms of education and entertainment, but also spirituality.

Many popular Bible apps are available today including Bible Gateway, Blue Letter Bible, Bible Hub, and YouVersion as users seek new ways to experience spirituality and activities like Bible study, translation, and the “verse of the day.”  But spirituality and technology can go way beyond apps.

The ability to quickly understand this technological evolution has paved the way for innovative methods of repurposing existing content, translation and dubbing, virtual voice creation, spiritual guidance, music production, and even linguistic development. Here’s how AI is revolutionizing these fields:

1. Reuse of Existing Content into New Formats

Companies like Opus and Vizard are at the forefront of transforming lengthy content, such as a 30-minute podcasts or sermons, into multiple, digestible TikToks. This not only makes the content more accessible but also caters to the preferences of a wider audience who favor short, impactful messages. The process involves carefully selecting key moments and messages that resonate with viewers, ensuring the essence and integrity of the original content are maintained while adapting it to suit the fast-paced nature of modern social media platforms.

Pastors.AI can take a YouTube sermon and create summaries, captioned sermon clips, devotionals, and discussion questions based on sermons.

2. Translating & Dubbing Into Multiple Languages

Imagine listening to one of your favorite spiritual teachers in a different language, seamlessly translated and dubbed, retaining the original’s thoughtful nuance and pacing. AI technologies developed by companies like HeyGen and Veed.io are making this possible, offering automated translation and lip-syncing capabilities. This breakthrough allows speakers’ messages to reach a global audience without the barriers of language, making spiritual and educational content more inclusive and accessible.

3. Virtual Voices and “Deep Fake” Reading

The concept of virtual voices and deep fake technologies brings an intriguing dimension to content consumption. Speechify today already provides ads showcasing Snoop Dogg reading the Bible. Speechify uses AI to mimic voices (including Snoop Dogg, Gwenyth Paltrow, and Mr. Beast), allowing famous personalities to narrate or present content in a unique and engaging manner. Companies like Eleven Labs and Murf.ai provide service for voice generation and voiceovers. One could presume narration of Bible versions without audio Bibles could be easily done with these tools.

4. Spiritual “Chatbots”

Companies like Character.AI and Replika make AI chatbots, with Character.AI emulating different personas and Replika emulating an empathetic friend. Soul Machines enables enterprises and entertainers to create digital AI replicas of people to “deepen engagement and connectivity.” It could easily be used to replicate theologians and spiritual counselors, like an “AI C.S. Lewis,” offering a novel approach to spiritual guidance. These bots are programmed with the teachings and philosophies of spiritual figures, providing users with interactive and personalized counsel. While they can’t replace human interaction, they can serve as supplementary resources for individuals seeking guidance.

5. “Customer Service” Technology and AI

Companies like LiveX serve as AI-enabled customer service agents. A friend shared with me that she tried to join a Bible study at a nearby church but after multiple emails to multiple people at that church, no one followed up. While that church may have deeper operational issues, perhaps adapting tools like LiveX may help with connecting people more quickly, avoiding people falling between the cracks, or helping share basic details of what a place of worship believes or where and when they meet.

6. AI-Enabled Gospel/Worship Music

Soundraw.io can create beats and music based on themes and emotions. Music.AI provides AI-enabled music mixing and instrument generation. Jarvis Lyrics can help with lyric creation. These tools allow creators to explore new musical landscapes, generate unique compositions, and even collaborate with virtual AI musicians. This fusion of technology and creativity could herald a new era of gospel and worship music, blending traditional themes with innovative sounds. While the emotion, backstories, and spiritual inspiration of songs are unique to each individual songwriter, AI tools can help accelerate and streamline the process.

7. Religious Text Translation and Oral Languages

The development of writing systems for oral languages is a complex process that traditionally takes years, if not decades. Interestingly, Meta has used the Bible as a starting point for multi-lingual translation as the Bible has been translated to many languages. In late 2022, Meta released news of their ability to translate into Hokkien, a primarily oral language. Through similar initiatives and technologies like that at Meta, AI could help accelerate this process by assisting in the creation of written forms for these languages and translating existing material into newly developed scripts. This not only preserves cultural heritage but also enhances communication and education for communities worldwide.

8. AI Assisting in the Creation of Videos

I recently saw an AI-generated video with audio, created from the book of Genesis (AI Bible Sagas). I believe we will be seeing more spiritual content unleashed because of the low-cost and improving quality of AI tools. Companies like OpenAI’s Sora, Pika, and Alibaba with EMO are at the forefront of AI-driven content creation, offering tools that can transform prompts or texts into engaging videos.

Sora, for instance, is a text-to-video model that can generate realistic scenes from text instructions, creating videos up to a minute long with the potential for multiple shots and character consistency. Pika provides an AI-powered video creation tool that simplifies the video editing process and can do prompt-to-video inclusive of audio. Alibaba’s EMO specializes in generating “talking head” videos from a single image and audio file, capable of producing long-form content with expressive facial animations and consistent character identity.

For content creators looking to adapt long-form texts like the Bible into video format, these tools might be revolutionary. They could automate the creation of vivid, narrative-driven videos that bring stories to life, potentially reducing production costs and time. Sora’s ability to generate complex scenes and EMO’s proficiency in creating expressive talking heads could be combined to create a series of videos that visually represent different passages or stories from the Bible. This could serve educational purposes, enhance engagement in religious studies, or provide a new medium for storytelling. However, it’s important to note that while these tools are powerful, they may have limitations in terms of maintaining physical accuracy and avoiding content that violates usage policies.

9. Deeper AI-Assisted Broader Reference Material Research

While I can ask ChatGPT, for a list of verses related to forgiveness or reconciliation and receive that with some commentary, it doesn’t provide deeper material synthesis and linkage. Rather than just “word match” searches, an AI-powered tool that could search based on deeper sentence-concepts would be very powerful. Perplexity has the ability to do that on public data.

Consensus is an OpenAI backed scientific research AI site that allows users to ask questions and get conclusions from research papers. Instead of only searching on core-texts like BibleGPT or QuranGPT, an application similar to Consensus that was able to synthesize a broader set of religious books, commentaries, journals, original-language sources and other publications could provide more rapid ability to research and understand potential viewpoints and approaches on theological material.

Companies like Scite and Jenni AI provide capabilities for research and citing deeper materials in academic journals. Scite will provide viewpoints on topics “How does the structure of a protein effect its function?” rather than just “word match,” as well as a summary, specific links, and references. Logos is known to have a very comprehensive set of Bibles, commentaries, reference material, and original language material. An AI-enabled Logos or a theological-material aware analog to Consensus or Scite that has access to religious materials and publications would significantly enhance the searchability of religious materials.

10. AI-enabled App development for non-profits

Most recently Cognition Labs showed us an autonomous junior programmer called “Devin,” which had coding, debugging, and infrastructure setup abilities. Andrew Gao, a Stanford CS student, made an early application of the Bible and AI in “BibleGPT” in January 2023. Upon the release of Devin, Andrew coded a new “BibleGPT.” With the advent of highly-autonomous programming AI agents, perhaps some work of expensive programmers can be offset.

Join My Webinar With YouVersion CEO: A Spiritual App With 700M Downloads

I hope this has been a helpful review of existing AI technologies, understanding their applications within spiritual contexts. I’d like to invite you to continue the conversation on April 4 with me and CEO Bobby Gruenwald of YouVersion.

Earlier this year, I met Bobby at a talk he gave in Menlo Park on his journey and reflections on technology, AI, and the Bible. It was a rewarding and inspirational talk. I was also thankful to be able share with him the story of my father, a deeply religious man, benefiting from YouVersion’s audio Bible + synced text product post-stroke. I thought it would be interesting to share Bobby’s experience and insights with our community.

Please join us by registering here.

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