30/05/2024
Embracing the Future: How AI Image and Video Generation Can Transform Content Creation in Churches
Introduction to AI in Content Creation
The digital content creation landscape has undergone a significant transformation with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Sora. These innovations are reshaping how content is conceived, created, and distributed, offering the Church of England and other religious institutions a powerful way to enhance engagement with their congregations and the wider community.
Capabilities of AI Tools for Churches
AI tools bring a range of functionalities that are particularly beneficial for churches:
- ChatGPT: Ideal for generating human-like text for newsletters, and social media posts.
- Midjourney: Specializes in creating high-quality images and artwork from text descriptions, useful for depicting biblical stories and church events.
- Sora: Excels in video production, useful for storytelling, announcing events, or broadcasting services to those unable to attend in person.
Current Trends and Effective Utilization
The current trends in AI emphasize ease of use, speed, and accessibility, allowing even those without deep technical skills to produce professional-level content. Churches can use AI to personalize and scale their communications, enhance the visual and emotional impact of sermons through visuals, create unique artwork for celebrations, and offer multilingual content to reach a broader audience.
Ethical Considerations and Challenges
Despite the advantages, the use of AI in content creation is not without its pitfalls. Key concerns include maintaining the authenticity of AI-generated content and avoiding depersonalization, where over-reliance on AI might disconnect the content from the community. It's crucial for churches to use AI to enhance rather than replace the human elements of their messaging.
The Irreplaceable Role of Human Creatives
Professional photographers and filmmakers play an irreplaceable role in capturing the depth of human emotions and sacred moments. AI can supplement this by handling routine tasks and enhancing creative outputs, but can’t replace the nuanced contributions of human professionals.
Practical Applications and Case Studies
Some churches have effectively used AI for major celebrations like Easter and Christmas, creating vivid illustrations of the Nativity and the Resurrection, which provided fresh perspectives and enriched their teachings. Another example includes using AI to edit and compile video footage from church retreats, enhancing the storytelling aspect of these events.
Conclusion
AI tools offer a potent means to enhance how churches communicate and connect with their communities. By integrating AI with human creativity, churches can maintain and enrich their storytelling and outreach. Moving forward, it's essential for church leaders to remain informed and considerate about integrating these technologies, ensuring they uplift and inspire their faith communities in authentic and meaningful ways.
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CAVEAT: the above article was entirely generated by ChatGPT…
AI for content creation, Part 1: Generated copy
Apologies for the above deception, but I felt this was perhaps the most effective demonstration of the power of the current iteration of ChatGPT. The prompt used was “Write a short blog aimed at Churches about how AI is going to revolutionise content creation, what the current trends are, mentioning tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney and Sora, what they allow content creators to do, as well as outlining some of the pitfalls”
Over the next three blogs, I will be outlining how tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney and the forthcoming Sora, can be used to generate content, with these ethical concerns in mind. This week, I’ll focus on ChatGPT.
Recently, OpenAI released their latest model, ChatGPT 4o, free to use for all without a subscription. It’s noticeably faster and more accurate than any prior version, and opens up a world of possibilities, but also some complex ethical questions.
At its core, ChatGPT is meant as an assistant to creative idea generation, data crunching and analysis. At its best, it helps rapidly brainstorm ideas, summarise data and search the web, in a way that sometimes genuinely feels like collaboration g with a colleague. Bouncing ideas off ChatGPT or asking it complex questions can all be very creatively fulfilling and inspiring.
Early models were often prone to very rigid, literal thinking, as well as making factual errors or reaching questionable conclusions. GPT4 and now GPT4o on the other hand have ironed out most of these issues and are often surprising in their ability to fully understand even the most obscure requests and provide solutions at lightning speed.
So as a brainstorming tool, it’s fantastic and much more intuitive, accurate, rapid and fulfilling to use than a search engine. But using ChatGPT to generate written content raises some ethical questions.
Now that you are aware that the initial part of this blog was generated in a couple of seconds by ChatGPT, I would invite you to revisit it and spot any tell-tale signs. Firstly, its somewhat dry and lacking in personality, missing a more chatty tone of voice. Every paragraph is roughly equal length, and its going through the topics in quite a rigid, methodical, dare I say, robotic style.
However, this is not the fault of the GPT, but rather a lack of direction on the part of the initial prompt. That’s probably the most important thing to keep in mind: AI tools rely entirely on how much input you give them. The more precise and clear your instructions are, the better the result.
In the above example, if we want the article to sound less robotic and more human, we need to specify this, and inject some personality. And this is where the ethical issues become apparent. To inject personality, we need to explain to ChatGPT what sort of personality and give it an example to draw upon. Using words such as “upbeat” only go so far. But telling it to imitate a person’s style usually produces eerily accurate results.
Examples
For example, if we were to rewrite the article’s conclusion in the style of a famous Youtuber, say Peter Mckinnon, we would get:
“Alright, let's wrap this up! Leveraging AI in content creation is like adding a supercharger to your creative toolkit—it's powerful, it's dynamic, and it's game-changing for how churches can communicate and connect. But here's the key: we've got to blend the cutting-edge capabilities of AI with the irreplaceable artistry of human creativity. Think of it like this: AI is your high-tech tool belt, but humans? We're the skilled artisans who bring depth, emotion, and realness to the picture. As church leaders and creators, we must keep our hands on the wheel, guiding these technologies to ensure they amplify our message without losing our authentic touch. By staying informed and intentional, we can use AI not just to keep up with the times, but to truly enrich the way we share our stories and inspire our communities. So, let’s get out there and make magic happen—AI and human creativity, together!”
On the other hand, let’s say we wanted the article to be more solemn, formal, inspiring, we could ask it to rewrite it in the style of… JFK?
“In this era of rapid technological advancement, our churches stand before a new frontier—not of lands and seas, but of digital realms and artificial intelligence. As we harness these powerful tools of AI in content creation, let us be guided by the light of our faith and the commitment to our communities. Let us resolve to use these technologies not merely as conveniences, but as catalysts to spread the enduring message of hope and compassion that is the cornerstone of our belief. So let us go forth, with both the wisdom of our past and the promise of our future, utilizing these tools to better our communication, deepen our connections, and inspire our congregations. In doing so, we truly make these new frontiers a testament to our shared values and aspirations.”
As you can see, the more specifically you ask it to imitate a style, the harder it becomes to recognise this as AI generated. So if you wanted to use it as a tool to generate a lot of content in your own voice and style, you would simply need to either provide it with some of your past articles, or just ask it to search for anything you have previously published online. It has access to the entirety of the internet, to every book or article that has ever been digitised, so it’s often incredible how quickly and accurately it can cater to the most obscure requests.
But as the above examples show, the way AI can imitate other people has some ethical implications: above all accusations of plagiarism (though the content generated is always new, not copied from anywhere, unless quotes are requested in which case they are always referenced), identity theft or fake news.
The biggest problem of all is the ease and convenience. We are about to enter a time where AI generated articles are so much easier to produce than putting in the time to do them yourself, that, no matter our reservations about doing so, it will become commonplace. This would impact the jobs of writers everywhere.
At the end of the day, like any new and powerful technological development, ChatGPT remains simply a tool that can be used for both good and bad, depending on the user. It’s important that we consider the ethical questions around its use.’ However, the written word is one thing, but surely AI would never be able to convincingly replicate great masterpieces of art or generate photos or videos as well as us…. Could it?
Find out next time In Part 2: Boundless imagery.
- Chris Rowe, Lead Content Producer
