By I’ve had two AI experiences recently which have not been fun.
Yesterday a bot, claiming to be me, emailed all the staff at church, in my name and style, asking them to discreetly sort out some gift tokens on Amazon. This wasn’t a data breach, because all those emails are on the church website and so they’re easily harvested, but nevertheless.
So I sent a quick email round everyone to check that we all know to ignore it (it’s not the first time it’s happened).
But still – it was weird receiving a spam email from myself.
And daily, now, I’m receiving invitations from ‘book clubs’, to join their discussions and promote one of my books. There’s a catch of course. I’ll have to pay for the privilege.
Each of those invitations is crafted to make it look like they’ve read the book in question. Each of them is worded differently. And none of them comes from a human.
AI is getting good at impersonating the human.
If you’re a pastor, you’ve probably lingered over the AI temptation more than once.
If you’re a pastor, you’ve probably lingered over the temptation more than once.
I write a brief message to the church family each week, to encourage them on a Wednesday. It would be the work of half an hour to write a prompt to get Claude to write them for me. I have hundreds stored on my laptop, and I can teach it my vice and style. That’s a couple of hours I will have saved each week. Should I?
Ditto for a bible study. Ditto for breaking the back of a sermon.
Now, leave your pastor-world, and join some very worried creatives in your church
Maybe a graphic designer. An architect. Perhaps even a commercially viable artist.
Each of them has seen their professional life eaten into by the ease of the rest of us using AI.
Every creative has seen their professional life eaten into by the ease of the rest of us using AI.
What are they there for? Does an architect just exist to double check the plans that Claude has thrown up?
Why spend days with paper and paint, when CoPilot can design a quite decent poster in exactly your style, in seconds? Because it’s only going to be looked at for seconds.
And ask any artist if they have seen computer generated art which is designed to sell – to outsell the human. Remember, equip a laptop with the right output, and a sketch in pencil, even a painting in oils, can be turned out at speed, on time, in exactly the size and colour that a client wants.
The question they’re wrestling with, is this: What is the point of being a human artist? Their non-Christian colleagues are asking exactly the same question.
How are you going to teach your creative Christians? How are you going to reach your local creative non-Christians?
If making art is just a hobby, like it is for me, it’s a non-question. I just do it to have fun. But what if it’s the way you make sure you and your family eat? Indoors?
And what if it’s about more than that? If art is about people being moved in some way, does it matter if they’re moved by an algorithmic product? Or what if we put the word ‘spiritual’ into that sentence – does it even mean anything?
Does having a pulse, a brain, a soul, bring anything to the party? Creatives have an instinct which is crying out that the answer is yes, but they – the non-Christians especially – are having a really hard time justifying that in the studio, at the desk, as they draw their salaries.
And, yes, I do realise the irony of using AI to generate the image for this blog post. It’s deliberate. And, to be clear, this post, like all my posts, has been written by me.
Now, get back into your pastor-world. How are you going to teach your creative Christians? How are you going to reach your local creative non-Christians?
Have you felt that pressure? Have you tried to come up with some answers?
Pile in!
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