AI can write a great sermon. But should you use it?

As a church in Germany engineers an entire service run by AI, Tim Wyatt speaks to experts in technology and ethics to find out whether Christians should be using tools such as ChatGPT within their ministry

“Dear friends, it is an honour for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany.”

With those words, a bearded man projected onto a TV screen began his sermon in St Paul’s church in the German town of Furth this past June. But the “man” was not actually a person at all. His image, his voice and indeed the content of his sermon – as well as the prayers, songs and psalms elsewhere in the liturgy - were all created by the AI program ChatGPT (and a little assistance from a local theologian, it should be noted).

ChatGPT famously rocketed up to 100m users within just two months of its public launch last year. And it is now far from the only large language model AI program available on the web. Clearly, the Furth experiment was an inevitability and it seems highly likely other pastors and church leaders are also toying with using these new tools to write sermons, prayers, Bible studies and more.