The other day I ran across a hymn written by AI in a Facebook group I am a part of dedicated to Liturgy. Someone experimentally prompted an AI engine to “Write a hymn about the incarnation of Jesus.”
Here’s what it produced:
A couple things struck me after reading it.
First, as to the poetic structure, it’s not a very good hymn, but considering it’s AI, it’s also not that bad. You can still feel the stiltedness, the rhyming could be improved, and in some places it feels like it just cobbled together lines from other songs. And while I love archaic words, “thrall” came right out of left field. It made me chuckle.
As to the content, I’ve regrettably sung worse. There is truth to be found in it. Jesus really is “the way, the life, the truth”. And yet despite the true statements found within it, it lacks an overall cohesiveness. It’s not a hymn about the incarnation, it’s a hymn that mentions it. It reads like a string of truthy magnets thrown at the fridge. The best I can say about it is that it looks like the work of a struggling teenager trying to write their first hymn. And that’s not actually a knock against it. I was once a struggling teenager trying to write my first hymn.
On the whole, it’s pretty mediocre. But I was highly alarmed.
The alarming bit is that I realized that it’s not a matter of if but when. There are going to be churches that will utilize AI to write their hymns (if they aren’t already!).
And more than just hymns. Further down the comment section in that Facebook post someone said they prompted the AI engine to “help plan a worship service.” Again, despite the somewhat mediocre results, the experiment was nonetheless impressive as it offered advice on tailoring the style to the congregation and even suggested certain songs to be sung. In discussing this, a friend of mine wondered when preachers would begin using AI for sermon prep. Shoot. Why not just prompt AI to write a theologically accurate sermon that is emotionally engaging on a particular chapter and verse?
It’s easy to see how many churches might unquestionably incorporate AI into their worship. The pragmatic usage of new and useful tech and the desire to remain relevant in an ever progressive world is not a new temptation to the American church.
But why should we not use AI for worship? What’s the big deal?
A Disconnect
Even if we consider AI from the standpoint as a tool that aids us in creating a work, we must recognize that it does so in a different way from other tools. Tools are a medium used to achieve an end. To write a song I can use tools—pencil, paper, an instrument, perhaps a computer, a microphone, etc—to aid in the creation. I write the words I think on paper. I play the sounds I desire on the instrument. AI works differently in this regard. It removes humanity from the creation process altogether. The only part I play with AI is prompting it. But prompting isn’t creating. I can ask a friend to tell me a story about a dog with wings but while I served as the initial inspiration, I play no part in the actual creation of the tale. It’s telling the pencil to write a song.
The reason this is a concern is because creating is a response to God and a duty of Man as the Imager of God. God is the Creator, Man the sub-creator. More than that Christ died for Man, not a machine. Why then would we outsource our God-given right and duty to create as a response in worship to our Maker and Savior to a robot?
AI disconnects humanity from creation. It’s a type of anti-incarnation. Christ became flesh. Using AI for worship would strip the flesh from our songs and sermons. Because humanity is intrinsically tied to the image of God, the desire to sing dehumanized hymns is at root-level the same desire to sing Godless hymns.
Now for another problem.
Consulting the Oracle of WiFi
What would you call it if you desired a certain type of wisdom, to be had in an instant, that is obtained by asking a bodiless Entity mediated to you by wizards and summoned by specifically crafted words?
Sounds a bit demon-y.
“But,” one might contest, “AI isn’t just producing this stuff all on it’s own like magic out of thin air; it’s essentially using algorithms to take and curate data from a vast conglomeration of resources.”
So who is writing your hymn of praise? Legion?
Listen, I get that AI is a human creation. But so were idols. And yes, Paul tells us that an idol is nothing. Artemis is just a stone. AI is just code. But like Paul, I’m not concerned with the stone or the code which is nothing. I’m concerned with what spiritual realities lie behind the stone or code. Paul identifies them as demons. I’m just imitating him.
So you may be strong enough in your faith to know that the idol and the food sacrificed to the idol is nothing, but the truth remains that participation with it is a participation with demons.
Would you go to AI to obtain words of wisdom and truth and rites for worship because it says true things? Would you go to the Oracle of Delphi to obtain a hymn of praise if she happened to be good at it? Did not demons recognize the Lordship of Christ? Did not the girl with the spirit of Python testify that Paul was a servant of the Most High God? Did not AI just spit out in the song above that Jesus is our Lord and God?
Neither Jesus nor Paul suggested that because the demons said true things at times that they should be utilized as a worship resource. In fact, they rebuked the demons and cast them out, not because they said something untrue, but because of who they are. Evil, unclean spirits.
Don’t surrender to demons what God has blessed and gifted the Church to do. Why go to AI to give you the words for glorifying God and edifying the Church when God has specifically gifted His body to do that very thing?
Paul, rather reasonably, states, “I do not want you to be participants with demons.”
So don’t let them write your worship songs.
"The reason this is a concern is because creating is a response to God and a duty of Man as the Imager of God. "
I wrote an article on ChatGPT and the demise of language to which it will inevitably lead. Words produced by AI are not language, they are anti-language. In order for language to have meaning there must be a producer, a creator, and AI is a hollow shell. Employing AI for creating worship songs truly does have a demonic hint, serves to devalue our creative abilities, and makes us in turn less human. We sing traditional hymns in our church and I love seeing the dates reaching back as far as the 1400's.