by Helsinki (AP) – A story of good against Evil played in the sanctuary of the Lutheran Church of St. Paul in Finland on the big canvas. Jesus was shown in Roben with long hair and a beard, while Satan was dressed in more modern clothing, but was created with a threatening frown and a higher voice all by artificial intelligence.
Even before the herd at the Tuesday evening, avatars were the pastors of the church and a former president of Finland, who died in 1986 and died from the Old Testament.
It was the first service in Finland, which mainly brought together from Ki tools, which wrote the sermons and some of the songs, composed the music and created the graphic.
The widespread experimental service moved over 120 people to the church in the northeast of Helsinki, much more than in a typical day of the week. People came from the city, as did a handful of foreigners who admitted that they did not speak Finnish well enough to understand everything.
“When people talk about AI, they usually talk about what AI can do in the future. But the future is now. … Ai can do all the things that people think that it may be possible in 10 years or so, ”said Rev. Petja Kopperoinen, who developed the idea and brought them to the bear.
The clergymen and the worshipers said they enjoyed it, but agreed that it would not replace the services that were listed by people.
“It was quite entertaining and funny, but it didn’t feel like a trade fair or a service. … it felt far from. I didn’t feel like talking to me, ”Taru Nieminen said the Associated Press.
The pastor of Rev. Kari Kanala, the pastor in St. Pauls, repeated her feeling.
“The warmth of people is what people need,” he said.
Other experiments with AI services
Churches and pastors around the world have experimented with AI like the rest of society to understand what role it could play in their lives – and whether it can attract more worshipers.
In 2023, an AI-managed service took place in a church in Germany. Last year, an avatar of “Jesus” made questions from believers on a computer screen in a Catholic chapel in Switzerland and offered answers on the basis of the writing.
The St. Paul church likes to try out new things, with pastors involving the demonstrations of football and ice hockey games in their services as well as dance and film festivals.
After Kopperoins visited a conference on AI and religion in Geneva in Geneva and heard about the service in Germany, he thought: Why not try?
Kanala was on board, as did Bishop Teemu Laajasalo from Helsinki.
Kopperoins worked with various AI tools for weeks to put together the 45-minute service, including open ais chatt-4o, to write the words with the exception of those from the Bible. Suno to compose the melodies, similar to pop music; And the synthesia -ai platform to create video -avatars of yourself, Kanala and another pastor from existing film material.
To see how he speaks on the screen that he never said in real life felt “scary,” said Kopperoinen.
Another tool, Akool, created the avatar of the former Finnish President Urho Kekkonen from the Old Testament and the exchange between Satan and Jesus.
Between AI-produced elements, clergymen and worshipers sang hymns with living organ music.
Boundaries impressive
The exercise had clear limits. Ai was not involved in awarding sins in the Helsinki service, and the Eucharist was not carried out.
Each issue must be checked and edited by a person, and the AI copy is often based on stereotypes, said Kopperoinine.
AI tools generally seemed to be reluctant to compose religious content, he said. Chatgpt initially did not write a dialogue between Jesus and Satan and only went with him after Kopperoinins had assured him that he was a Lutheran pastor and that it was nothing wrong to write him.
Chatgpt also refused to give absolution or blessings, which is a good guardrail, Kanala said: “Because it can somehow share very intimate and religious things.”
Kopperoinins also said that he was aware of the effects of AI tools on the environment, including the amount of water that was used as a power supply. Some St. Pauls criticized in the Finnish Lutheran Church for using AI to maintain people at the expense of the environment, he said.
The importance of human touch
Better said they had found the service differently, interesting and entertaining, but sometimes also confusing. Language patterns were quick and difficult to follow.
“I liked the songs. They were really catchy, although they lacked the kind of soul that people have, ”said student JEEREA PULKKINES, who did not like the quick delivery of the text by the tools.
Eeva Salonen, Chief Development Officer at Helsinki Parish Union, said that the service was “more like a performance” and found it more impersonal than “He would be with real people”.
“But I liked it very much,” she added.
The need for a human element is one of the reasons why AI does not replace real pastors, said Kopperoinen.
“It cannot be sensitive to people. AI can’t really answer your questions in a spiritual way, ”he said.
Nevertheless, both Kopperoins and Kanala believe that there is a place in the church for AI. St. Pauls is already using it for accounting, and Kopperoinins sometimes turns to Chatgpt to help him compose sermons or if he has to find verses on a specific topic.
Kanala admits that he has always triggered “against the AI”, but decided to confront them head -on, and now believes that clergy can help with things like research for sermons and speeches.
Tom Stoneham, philosophy professor of the University of York and Ethics of the Center for Doctoral Training in Safe AI systems in Great Britain, ai realizes that AI can only replace people where the function of man is purely instrumental and transaction transactions, such as “in customer service situations”.
Even in these situations, a smile or a briefly friendly exchange adds a value that AI cannot, said Stoneham.
In a religious environment, “is about people, not an instrument. They are not just a means of achieving something,” he said.
Anna Puzio, a researcher for ethics of technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, said that it is important for churches and religious groups so that the concerns about AI to experiment. In this way you can help “to form these AI processes, to develop AI and to design it in a responsible way,” she said.
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