The artificial intelligence bot, ChatGPT, is a type of AI that is able to understand and generate human-like text. It can reportedly write anything – term papers, song lyrics, and resumes – and answer complex science questions and other requests. So evangelist Darrel Davis was curious about how it would do writing a sermon for a Baptist pastor.
"I asked it to write me a sermon on such and such a passage, and I don't remember what the passage was now, and it actually came back with a three-point sermon that … would've been a good skeleton to actually write a sermon from," he tells AFN. "It wasn't theologically adequate, but it did come back with a sermon."
ChatGPT has the entire internet to draw from, and it has been trained to "feel natural" and mimic someone's style. As far as theological orthodoxy, Davis submits that the more direction it is given, the better the result will be.
"From what I understand, the more information you give it, the more specific that it will give you what you ask for," he says. "So, the more you supply, the better narrowed down it would get."
Even so, Davis does not believe many pastors will utilize ChatGPT for help with their sermons, as most have a specific heart for their congregations that AI could never capture.
"I don't know that it would be a good resource, because obviously, it's not going to give you a completely theologically sound sermon," he reiterates. "But it wasn't anything objectionable."
As a pastor, he would describe the system as more of "a curiosity" than a resource.
Related (from Fox News):
I interviewed ChatGPT as if it was a human; here's what it had to say that gave me chills
