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Religious Leaders Experiment with A.I. in Sermons

Published

12 months ago

January 3, 2025

Religious Leaders Experiment with A.I. in Sermons

To members of his synagogue, the voice that played over the speakers of Congregation Emanu El in Houston sounded just like Rabbi Josh Fixler’s.

In the same steady rhythm his congregation had grown used to, the voice delivered a sermon about what it meant to be a neighbor in the age of artificial intelligence. Then, Rabbi Fixler took to the bimah himself.

“The audio you heard a moment ago may have sounded like my words,” he said. “But they weren’t.”

The recording was created by what Rabbi Fixler called “Rabbi Bot,” an A.I. chatbot trained on his old sermons. The chatbot, created with the help of a data scientist, wrote the sermon, even delivering it in an A.I. version of his voice. During the rest of the service, Rabbi Fixler intermittently asked Rabbi Bot questions aloud, which it would promptly answer.

Rabbi Fixler is among a growing number of religious leaders experimenting with A.I. in their work, spurring an industry of faith-based tech companies that offer A.I. tools, from assistants that can do theological research to chatbots that can help write sermons.

For centuries, new technologies have changed the ways people worship, from the radio in the 1920s to television sets in the 1950s and the internet in the 1990s. Some proponents of A.I. in religious spaces have gone back even further, comparing A.I.’s potential — and fears of it — to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.

Religious leaders have used A.I. to translate their livestreamed sermons into different languages in real time, blasting them out to international audiences. Others have compared chatbots trained on tens of thousands of pages of Scripture to a fleet of newly trained seminary students, able to pull excerpts about certain topics nearly instantaneously.

But the ethical questions around using generative A.I. for religious tasks have become more complicated as the technology has improved, religious leaders say. While most agree that using A.I. for tasks like research or marketing is acceptable, other uses for the technology, like sermon writing, are seen by some as a step too far.

Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas, used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate an entire service for his church as an experiment in 2023. He marketed it using posters of robots, and the service drew in some curious new attendees — “gamer types,” Mr. Cooper said — who had never before been to his congregation.

The thematic prompt he gave ChatGPT to generate various parts of the service was: “How can we recognize truth in a world where A.I. blurs the truth?” ChatGPT came up with a welcome message, a sermon, a children’s program and even a four-verse song, which was the biggest hit of the bunch, Mr. Cooper said. The song went:

As algorithms spin webs of lies
We lift our gaze to the endless skies
Where Christ’s teachings illuminate our way
Dispelling falsehoods with the light of day

Mr. Cooper has not since used the technology to help write sermons, preferring to draw instead from his own experiences. But the presence of A.I. in faith-based spaces, he said, poses a larger question: Can God speak through A.I.?

“That’s a question a lot of Christians online do not like at all because it brings up some fear,” Mr. Cooper said. “It may be for good reason. But I think it’s a worthy question.”

The impact of A.I. on religion and ethics has been a touch point for Pope Francis on several occasions, though he has not directly addressed using A.I. to help write sermons.

Our humanity “enables us to look at things with God’s eyes, to see connections, situations, events and to uncover their real meaning,” the pope said in a message early last year. “Without this kind of wisdom, life becomes bland.”

He added, “Such wisdom cannot be sought from machines.”

Phil EuBank, a pastor at Menlo Church in Menlo Park, Calif., compared A.I. to a “bionic arm” that could supercharge his work. But when it comes to sermon writing, “there’s that Uncanny Valley territory,” he said, “where it may get you really close, but really close can be really weird.”

Rabbi Fixler agreed. He recalled being taken aback when Rabbi Bot asked him to include in his A.I. sermon, a one-time experiment, a line about itself.

“Just as the Torah instructs us to love our neighbors as ourselves,” Rabbi Bot said, “can we also extend this love and empathy to the A.I. entities we create?”

Rabbis have historically been early adopters of new technologies, especially for printed books in the 15th century. But the divinity of those books was in the spiritual relationship that their readers had with God, said Rabbi Oren Hayon, who is also a part of Congregation Emanu El.

To assist his research, Rabbi Hayon regularly uses a custom chatbot trained on 20 years of his own writings. But he has never used A.I. to write portions of sermons.

“Our job is not just to put pretty sentences together,” Rabbi Hayon said. “It’s to hopefully write something that’s lyrical and moving and articulate, but also responds to the uniquely human hungers and pains and losses that we’re aware of because we are in human communities with other people.” He added, “It can’t be automated.”

Kenny Jahng, a tech entrepreneur, believes that fears about ministers’ using generative A.I. are overblown, and that leaning into the technology may even be necessary to appeal to a new generation of young, tech-savvy churchgoers when church attendance across the country is in decline.

Mr. Jahng, the editor in chief of a faith- and tech-focused media company and founder of an A.I. education platform, has traveled the country in the last year to speak at conferences and promote faith-based A.I. products. He also runs a Facebook group for tech-curious church leaders with over 6,000 members.

“We are looking at data that the spiritually curious in Gen Alpha, Gen Z are much higher than boomers and Gen X-ers that have left the church since Covid,” Mr. Jahng said. “It’s this perfect storm.”

As of now, a majority of faith-based A.I. companies cater to Christians and Jews, but custom chatbots for Muslims and Buddhists exist as well.

Some churches have already started to subtly infuse their services and websites with A.I.

The chatbot on the website of the Father’s House, a church in Leesburg, Fla., for instance, appears to offer standard customer service. Among its recommended questions: “What time are your services?”

The next suggestion is more complex.

“Why are my prayers not answered?”

The chatbot was created by Pastors.ai, a start-up founded by Joe Suh, a tech entrepreneur and attendee of Mr. EuBank’s church in Silicon Valley.

After one of Mr. Suh’s longtime pastors left his church, he had the idea of uploading recordings of that pastor’s sermons to ChatGPT. Mr. Suh would then ask the chatbot intimate questions about his faith. He turned the concept into a business.

Mr. Suh’s chatbots are trained on archives of a church’s sermons and information from its website. But around 95 percent of the people who use the chatbots ask them questions about things like service times rather than probing deep into their spirituality, Mr. Suh said.

“I think that will eventually change, but for now, that concept might be a little bit ahead of its time,” he added.

Critics of A.I. use by religious leaders have pointed to the issue of hallucinations — times when chatbots make stuff up. While harmless in certain situations, faith-based A.I. tools that fabricate religious scripture present a serious problem. In Rabbi Bot’s sermon, for instance, the A.I. invented a quote from the Jewish philosopher Maimonides that would have passed as authentic to the casual listener.

For other religious leaders, the issue of A.I. is a simpler one: How can sermon writers hone their craft without doing it entirely themselves?

“I worry for pastors, in some ways, that it won’t help them stretch their sermon writing muscles, which is where I think so much of our great theology and great sermons come from, years and years of preaching,” said Thomas Costello, a pastor at New Hope Hawaii Kai in Honolulu.

On a recent afternoon at his synagogue, Rabbi Hayon recalled taking a picture of his bookshelf and asking his A.I. assistant which of the books he had not quoted in his recent sermons. Before A.I., he would have pulled down the titles themselves, taking the time to read through their indexes, carefully checking them against his own work.

“I was a little sad to miss that part of the process that is so fruitful and so joyful and rich and enlightening, that gives fuel to the life of the Spirit,” Rabbi Hayon said. “Using A.I. does get you to an answer quicker, but you’ve certainly lost something along the way.”

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Business

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

Published

2 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Snoopy is everywhere right now — from jewelry to pimple patches. Why?

As a child, Clara Spars, who grew up in Charles M. Schulz’s adoptive hometown of Santa Rosa, assumed that every city had life-size “Peanuts” statues dotting its streets.

After all, Spars saw the sculptures everywhere she went — in the Santa Rosa Plaza, at Montgomery Village, outside downtown’s Empire Cleaners. When she and her family inevitably left town and didn’t stumble upon Charlie Brown and his motley crew, she was perplexed.

Whatever void she felt then is long gone, since the beagle has become a pop culture darling, adorning all manner of merchandise — from pimple patches to luxury handbags. Spars herself is the proud owner of a Baggu x Peanuts earbuds case and is regularly gifted Snoopy apparel and accessories.

“It’s so funny to see him everywhere because I’m like, ‘Oh, finally!’” Spars said.

The spike in Snoopy products has been especially pronounced this year with the 75th anniversary of “Peanuts,” a.k.a. Snoopy’s 75th birthday. But the grip Snoopy currently has on pop culture and the retail industry runs deeper than anniversary buzz. According to Sony, which last week acquired majority ownership of the “Peanuts” franchise, the IP is worth half a billion dollars.

To be clear, Snoopy has always been popular. Despite his owner being the “Peanuts” strip’s main character and the namesake for most of the franchise’s adaptations, Snoopy was inarguably its breakout star. He was the winner of a 2001 New York Times poll about readers’ favorite “Peanuts” characters, with 35% of the vote.

This year, the Charles M. Schulz Museum celebrated the 75th anniversary of the “Peanuts” comic strip’s debut.

(Brennan Spark / Charles M. Schulz Museum)

But the veritable Snoopymania possessing today’s consumers really exploded with the social media boom of the early 2010s, said Melissa Menta, senior vice president of global brand and communications for Peanuts Worldwide.

That’s also when the company saw the first signs of uncharacteristically high brand engagement, Menta said. She largely attributed the success of “Peanuts” on social media to the comic strip’s suitability to visual platforms like Instagram.

“No one reads the comic strips in newspapers anymore,” Menta said, “but if you think about it, a four-panel comic strip, it’s actually an Instagram carousel.”

Then, in 2023, Peanuts Worldwide launched the campaign that made Snoopy truly viral.

That year, the brand partnered with the American Red Cross to create a graphic tee as a gift for blood donors. The shirt, which featured Snoopy’s alter ego Joe Cool and the message “Be Cool. Give Blood,” unexpectedly became internet-famous. In the first week of the collaboration, the Red Cross saw a 40% increase in donation appointments, with 75% of donors under the age of 34.

“People went crazy over it,” Menta said, and journalists started asking her, “Why?”

Her answer? “Snoopy is cute and cool. He’s everything you want to be.”

Art of the Peanuts characters hangs at the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.

The Red Cross collaboration was so popular that Peanuts Worldwide brought it back this year, releasing four new shirt designs. Again, the Snoopy fandom — plus some Woodstock enthusiasts — responded, with 250,000 blood donation appointments made nationwide in the month after the collection’s launch.

In addition to the Red Cross partnership, Peanuts Worldwide this year has rolled out collaborations with all kinds of retailers, from luxury brands like Coach and Kith to mass-market powerhouses like Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. Menta said licensed product volume is greater than ever, estimating that the brand currently has more than 1,200 licensees in “almost every territory around the world,” which is approximately four times the number it had 40 years ago.

Then again, at that time, Schulz enjoyed and regularly executed veto power when it came to product proposals, and licensing rules were laid out in what former Times staff writer Carla Lazzareschi called the “Bible.”

“The five-pound, 12-inch-by-18-inch binder given every new licensee establishes accepted poses for each character and painstakingly details their personalities,” Lazzareschi wrote in a 1987 Times story. “Snoopy, for example, is said to be an ‘extrovert beagle with a Walter Mitty complex.’ The guidelines cover even such matters as Snoopy’s grip on a tennis racquet.”

Although licensing has expanded greatly since then, Menta said she and her retail development associates “try hard not to just slap a character onto a T-shirt.” Their goal is to honor Schulz’s storytelling, she added, and with 18,000 “Peanuts” strips in the archive, licensees have plenty of material to pull from.

Rick Vargas, the senior vice president of merchandising and marketing at specialty retailer BoxLunch, said his team regularly returns to the Schulz archives to mine material that could resonate with customers.

“As long as you have a fresh look at what that IP has to offer, there’s always something to find. There’s always a new product to build,” Vargas said.

Indeed, this has been one of BoxLunch’s strongest years in terms of sales of “Peanuts” products, and Snoopy merchandise specifically, the executive said.

Bejeweled keychains of Snoopy and Charlie Brown.

Daniella Yacobovsky, co-founder of the celebrity-favorite accessory retailer BaubleBar, reported similar high sales for the brand’s recent “Peanuts” collection.

“Especially for people who are consistent BaubleBar fans, every time we introduce new character IP, there is this huge excitement from that fandom that we are bringing their favorite characters to life,” Yacobovsky said.

The bestselling item in the collection, the Peanuts Friends Forever Charm Bracelet, sold out in one day. Plus, customers have reached out with new ideas for products linked to specific “Peanuts” storylines.

More recently, Peanuts Worldwide has focused on marketing to younger costumers in response to unprecedented brand engagement from Gen Z. In November, it launched a collaboration with Starface, whose cult-favorite pimple patches are a staple for teens and young adults. The Snoopy stickers have already sold out on Ulta.com, Starface founder Julie Schott said in an emailed statement, adding that the brand is fielding requests for restocks.

“We know it’s a certified hit when resale on Depop and EBay starts to spike,” Schott said.

The same thing happened in 2023, when a CVS plush of Snoopy in a puffer jacket (possibly the dog’s most internet-famous iteration to date) sold out in-store and started cropping up on EBay — for more than triple the original price.

The culprits were Gen-Zers fawning over how cute cozy Snoopy was, often on social media.

Yellow and white pouches with Snoopy pimple patches.

Hannah Guy Casey, senior director of brand and marketing at Peanuts Worldwide, said in 2024, the official Snoopy TikTok account gained 1.1 million followers, and attracted 85.4 million video views and 17.6 million engagements. This year, the account has gained another 1.2 million followers, and racked up 106.5 million video views and 23.2 million engagements.

Guy Casey noted that TikTok is where the brand experiences much of its engagement among Gen Z fans.

Indeed, the platform is a hot spot for fan-created Snoopy content, from memes featuring the puffer jacket to compilations of his most relatable moments. Several Snoopy fan accounts, including one dedicated to a music-loving Snoopy plushie, boast well over half a million followers.

Caryn Iwakiri, a speech and language pathologist at Sunnyvale’s Lakewood Tech EQ Elementary School whose classroom is Snoopy-themed, recently took an impromptu trip to the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa after seeing its welcome center decked out with Snoopy decor on TikTok. Once she arrived, she realized the museum was celebrating the “Peanuts” 75th anniversary.

Two red construction-paper doghouses with Snoopy on each roof.

It’s a familiar story for Schulz Museum director Gina Huntsinger.

“Last December, we were packed, and I was at the front talking to people, and I just randomly asked this group, ‘Why are you here?’”

It turned out that the friends had traveled from Washington, D.C., and Las Vegas to meet in Santa Rosa and visit the museum after seeing it on TikTok.

According to Stephanie King, marketing director at the Schulz Museum, the establishment is experiencing its highest-ever admissions since opening in 2002. In the 2024–2025 season, the museum increased its attendance by nearly 45% from the previous year.

Huntsinger said she’s enjoyed watching young visitors experience the museum in new ways.

In the museum’s education room, where visitors typically trace characters from the original Schulz comics or fill out “Peanuts” coloring pages, Gen Z museumgoers are sketching pop culture renditions of Snoopy — Snoopy as rock band Pierce the Veil, Snoopy as pop star Charli XCX.

“When our social media team puts them up [online], there’s these comments among this generation that gets this, and they’re having conversations about it,” Huntsinger said. “It’s dynamic, it’s fun, it’s creative. It makes me feel like there’s hope in the world.”

A white wall with "Passport to Peanuts" art.

Laurel Roxas felt similarly when they first discovered “Peanuts” as a kid while playing the “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” video game on their PlayStation Portable. For Roxas, who is Filipino, it was Snoopy and not the “Peanuts” children who resonated most.

“Nobody was Asian. I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not even in the story,’” they said.

Because Snoopy was so simply drawn, Roxas added, he was easy to project onto. They felt similarly about Hello Kitty; with little identifying features or dialogue of their own, the characters were blank canvases for their own personification.

Roxas visited Snoopy Museum Tokyo with their brother last year. They purchased so much Snoopy merchandise — “everything I could get my hands on” — that they had to buy additional luggage to bring it home.

For some Snoopy enthusiasts, the high volume of Snoopy products borders on oversaturation, threatening to cheapen the spirit of the character.

Growing up, Bella Shingledecker loved the holiday season because it meant that the “Peanuts” animated specials would be back on the air. It was that sense of impermanence, she believes, that made the films special.

Now, when she sees stacks of Snoopy cookie jars or other trend-driven products at big-box stores like T.J. Maxx, it strikes her as a bit sad.

“It just feels very unwanted,” she said. For those who buy such objects, she said she can’t help but wonder, “Will this pass your aesthetic test next year?”

Lina Jeong, for one, isn’t worried that Snoopy’s star will fade.

Jeong’s affinity for the whimsical beagle was passed down to her from her parents, who furnished their home with commemorative “Peanuts” coffee table books. But she fell in love with Snoopy the first time she saw “Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown,” which she rewatches every Valentine’s Day.

This past year, she was fresh out of a relationship when the holiday rolled around and she found herself tearing up during scenes of Snoopy making Valentine’s crafts for his friends.

“Maybe I was hyper-emotional from everything that had happened, but I remember being so struck,” that the special celebrated platonic love over romantic love, Jeong said.

It was a great comfort to her at the time, she said, and she knows many others have felt that same solace from “Peanuts” media — especially from its dear dog.

“Snoopy is such a cultural pillar that I feel like fads can’t just wash it off,” she said.

Soon, she added, she plans to move those “Peanuts” coffee table books into her own apartment in L.A.

Business

Fight between Waymo and Santa Monica goes to court

Published

14 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Fight between Waymo and Santa Monica goes to court

Waymo is taking the city of Santa Monica to court after the city ordered the company to cease charging its autonomous vehicles at two facilities overnight, claiming the lights and beeping at the lots were a nuisance to residents.

The two charging stations at the intersection of Euclid Street and Broadway have been a sour point for neighbors since they began operating roughly a year ago. Some residents have told The Times they’ve been unable to sleep because of the incessant beeping from Waymos maneuvering in and out of charging spots on the lot 24 hours a day.

Last month, the city ordered Waymo and the company that operates the charging stations, Voltera, to stop overnight operations at the sites, arguing that the light, noise and activity there constitute a public nuisance. Instead of complying, Waymo has turned around and filed a suit against the city, asking the court to intervene.

“Waymo’s activities at the Broadway Facilities do not constitute a public nuisance,” the company argued in its complaint, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court. “Waymo faces imminent and irreparable harm to its operations, employees, and customers.”

A spokesperson for the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the suit, the city was aware that the Voltera charging facilities were to operate and maintain a commercial electric vehicle fleet 24 hours a day, and the city approved its use when it approved the permits for the stations.

The rift between the company and some Santa Monica residents began as soon as the vehicles began utilizing the 24-hour charging stations, which have overnight staffing, lights and cars beeping as they reverse in and out of parking spots. Tensions got so bad that some residents took to blocking the path of the driverless vehicles, blocking the driveways into the charging stations, and placing orange cones in the area to hinder their routes and create backups, a practice several have called “stacking the Waymos.”

Meanwhile, employees at the charging stations have called police several times as a result, although no arrests have been made. Waymo also unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a temporary restraining order against one resident who had allegedly repeatedly blocked the vehicles.

On Nov. 19, the city ordered Waymo to stop charging its autonomous cars at the two lots overnight or face the possibility of legal action. Waymo declined and instead sued the city last week after negotiations with the city on mitigation measures to the lots fell apart.

According to the lawsuit, Waymo and Voltera representatives reached out to the city after the Nov. 19 order, looking for ways to mitigate the noise and lights from the lots, including initiating a software update that would change the vehicles’ path to the charging stations. But after a meeting on Dec. 15 with the city, no agreement was reached, the company said in its complaint.

“We are disappointed that the City has chosen an adversarial path over a collaborative one,” a spokesperson for Waymo said in a statement.

“The City’s position has been to insist that no actions taken or proposed by Waymo would satisfy the complaining neighbors and therefore must be deemed insufficient.”

The company also blasted the city’s handling of the dispute, arguing that despite facing a budget crisis, city officials have adopted a contentious strategy against business.

“The City of Santa Monica’s recent actions are inconsistent with its stated goal of attracting investment,” the company said in a statement. “At a time when the City faces a serious fiscal crisis, officials are choosing to obstruct properly permitted investment rather than fostering a ‘ready for business’ environment.”

The lawsuit is just the latest legal battle for the Alphabet-owned company, which has been rapidly expanding across California, making the white, driverless vehicles more commonplace.

Two years ago, the company was sued by the city of San Francisco, which argued that the California Public Utilities Commission shouldn’t have handed Waymo permits to expand and operate in the city, and that the regulatory agency had abdicated its responsibilities.

The California 1st District Court of Appeal disagreed, and ruled against the city.

This past June, Waymo announced it would expand its service area to 120 square miles in Los Angeles County, with Waymos operating in Playa del Rey, Ladera Heights, Echo Park, Silver Lake and Hollywood.

In November the company launched its ride-hailing service to now operate across Los Angeles County freeways, as well as in the San Francisco Bay and Phoenix.

Since it launched in Santa Monica, the company argues it has done more than a million trips in the city and in November alone, recorded more than 50,000 rides starting or ending there.

“The [charging] site has enabled Waymo to provide a safe, sustainable and accessible transportation option to city residents,” Waymo said in the statement.

Business

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Published

1 day ago

December 22, 2025

Press Room

Video: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

new video loaded: Uber Clears Violent Felons to Drive

Our reporter, Emily Steel, found that in many states, Uber’s guidelines allow people with serious criminal convictions to drive, as long as those convictions are more than seven years old. Some of those drivers have gone on to sexually assault or harass passengers.

By Emily Steel, Christina Shaman, Zach Caldwell, David Jouppi and Thomas Trudeau

December 22, 2025