What one Finnish church learned from creating a service almost entirely with AI

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HELSINKI (AP) — A tale of good versus evil played out on the large screen in the sanctuary of St. Paul’s Lutheran church in Finland. Jesus was shown in robes with long hair and a beard, while Satan was dressed in more modern clothes but with a menacing frown and higher-pitched voice — all created by artificial intelligence.

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Also addressing the flock at the Tuesday evening service were avatars of the church’s pastors and a former president of Finland who died in 1986, reading from the Old Testament.

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It was the first church service in Finland put together mostly by AI tools, which wrote the sermons and some of the songs, composed the music and created the visuals.

The widely advertised experimental service drew over 120 people to the church in northeastern Helsinki, much more than on a typical weeknight. People came from out of town as did a handful of foreigners who admitted they didn’t speak Finnish well enough to understand it all.

“Usually when people talk about AI, they are talking about what AI can do in the future. But the future is now. … AI can do all those things that people think that it can maybe do in 10 years or so,” said the Rev. Petja Kopperoinen, who came up with the idea and brought it to fruition.

The clergy and worshippers said they enjoyed it, but agreed it wouldn’t replace services led by humans anytime soon.

“It was pretty entertaining and fun, but it didn’t feel like a Mass or a service. … It felt distant. I didn’t feel like they were talking to me,” Taru Nieminen told The Associated Press.

The Rev. Kari Kanala, the vicar at St. Paul’s, echoed her sentiment.

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“The warmth of the people is what people need,” he said.

Other experiments with AI church services

Churches and pastors around the world have been experimenting with AI, just like the rest of the society, to try to understand what role it could play in their lives — and if it can attract more worshippers.

In 2023, an AI-led service was held in a church in Germany. Last year, an avatar of “Jesus” on a computer screen in a Catholic chapel in Switzerland took questions from believers and offered responses based on Scripture.

St. Paul’s church likes to try new things, with pastors incorporating screenings of soccer and ice hockey matches into their services, along with dance and film festivals.

After attending a conference on AI and religion in Geneva and hearing about the service in Germany, Kopperoinen says he thought: Why not try it?

Kanala was on board, as was Bishop Teemu Laajasalo of Helsinki.

Kopperoinen worked for weeks with different AI tools to assemble the 45-minute service, including Open AI’s ChatGPT-4o to write the words, except for those from the Bible; Suno to compose the tunes, similar to pop music; and the Synthesia AI platform to create video avatars of himself, Kanala and another pastor from existing footage.

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Seeing himself onscreen speaking words he never said in real life felt “eerie,” Kopperoinen said.

Another tool, Akool, meanwhile, created the avatar of former Finnish President Urho Kekkonen reading from the Old Testament, and the exchange between Satan and Jesus.

In between AI-produced elements, clergy and worshippers sang hymns with live organ music.

Imposing limits

The exercise had clear limits. AI was not involved in forgiving sins at the Helsinki service, and the Eucharist was not performed.

Any output needs to be fact-checked and edited by a human, and AI copy is often based on stereotypes, Kopperoinen said.

AI tools generally seemed reluctant to compose religious content, he said. ChatGPT initially wouldn’t write dialogue between Jesus and Satan and went along with it only after Kopperoinen assured it that he was a Lutheran pastor and there was nothing wrong with writing it.

ChatGPT also refused to give absolution or blessings, which is a good guardrail, Kanala said, “because somehow it can divide things which are very intimate and religious.”

Kopperoinen also said he was aware of the impact of AI tools on the environment, including, for example, the amount of water used to power them. Some in the Finnish Lutheran church criticized St. Paul’s for using AI to entertain people at the cost of the environment, he said.

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The importance of human touch

Worshippers said they found the service different, interesting and entertaining, but also confusing at times. Speech patterns were rapid and hard to follow.

“I did like the songs. They were really catchy, although they lacked the kind of soul the humans have,” said student Jeera Pulkkinen, who disliked the tools’ fast delivery of the text.

Eeva Salonen, chief development officer at the Helsinki Parish Union, said the service felt “more like a performance,” finding it more impersonal than “it would be with real people.”

“But I really liked it,” she added.

The need for a human element is one of the reasons AI is unlikely to replace real pastors, Kopperoinen said.

“It can’t be empathetic towards people. AI can’t really answer your questions in a spiritual way,” he said.

Still, both Kopperoinen and Kanala believe there is a place in the church for AI. St. Paul’s already uses it for bookkeeping, and Kopperoinen sometimes turns to ChatGPT to help him compose sermons or when he needs to find verses on a particular topic.

Kanala admits he has “always opposed” AI, but decided to confront it head-on and now thinks it can help clergy on things like research for sermons and speeches.

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Tom Stoneham, a University of York philosophy professor and an ethicist with the Center for Doctoral Training in Safe AI Systems in the U.K., notes AI can replace humans only “where the function of the human is purely instrumental” and transactional, such as “in customer service situations.”

Even in these situations, however, a smile or a brief friendly exchange adds value that AI can’t, Stoneham said.

In a religious setting, “it’s about the human, not an instrument. They’re not just a mere means to achieving something,” he said. “It’s that humanity that is adding value to the situation.”

Anna Puzio, a researcher on ethics of technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, said that given the concerns with AI, it’s important for churches and religious groups to experiment with it. That way they can help “shape these AI processes and develop AI and design it in a responsible way,” she said.

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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