Business

Religious Leaders Experiment with A.I. in Sermons

Published

6 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

Protesters are chasing federal agents out of L.A. County hotels: ‘A small victory’

Published

18 hours ago

June 19, 2025

Press Room

Protesters are chasing federal agents out of L.A. County hotels: ‘A small victory’

At Pasadena’s AC Hotel earlier this month, dozens of protesters gathered in an effort to confront federal agents who had arrived in town amid demonstrations against the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.

Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo was among those present on June 7 as demonstrators holding signs with “ICE out of Pasadena” and other messages chased federal vehicles out of the luxury hotel’s parking garage, cheering and recording it all on their cellphones.

The mayor said the protest forced the agents to leave the place they were using for local accommodations during their L.A. operations, which involved protecting federal buildings downtown.

“Word got out that there were Homeland Security vehicles parked at the hotel,” Gordo told The Times. “People wanted to express their 1st Amendment rights and they did so in a lawful, nonviolent and respectful manner.”

After hours of noisy rallying, the hotel staff asked the feds to pack up their things and go, according to Gordo. By sunset, uniformed agents from the Federal Protective Service, part of the Department of Homeland Security, were seen walking out of the hotel with their bags stacked on a luggage cart in a video of the incident that went viral online. Their vehicles were escorted out of the garage by local police as protesters trailed behind.

Hotels have emerged as hot spots for confrontations between community members and immigration agents. Federal agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, sometimes rent blocks of rooms in places where agents are dispatched for major operations.

Hotels have emerged as hot spots for confrontations between community members and immigration agents.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The showdown in Pasadena was one of several recent instances of protesters coming together at hotels across the Los Angeles region to put pressure on their proprietors to offer no quarter to federal personnel during the Trump administration’s crackdown. The businesses, which rely on immigrant workers for cleaning and maintenance, have been cast into an awkward position — one that requires balancing politics with protecting their employees.

From Whittier to Hawaiian Gardens to Brea, concerned citizens have repeatedly taken to social media and whisper networks to share locations where they have spotted who they believe are federal agents. And people have followed up on such information by staging protests outside hotels in communities including Long Beach, Downey and Glendale.

Employees at the AC Hotel Pasadena referred inquiries to a spokeswoman, who did not immediately provide a comment. It was back to business as usual Tuesday afternoon at the Marriott property, which opened earlier this year. A man on a plush couch worked on his laptop, a woman sipped a beer at the bar and staff milled about.

Gordo said he had confirmed that there are no longer any Homeland Security agents staying at the property.

The Homeland Security press office did not immediately provide comment, and agencies under the department’s umbrella, including ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, did not respond to inquires.

Protesters have been arrested this month for allegedly interfering with federal officers, and federal agencies have expressed concerns about the repercussions of people “doxxing” agents by sharing their locations and other personal information online.

“People are out there taking photos of the names, their faces and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves,” Reuters reported acting ICE chief Todd Lyons said last week.

A Pasadena police cruiser and uniformed police officers block the entrance to a hotel

The crowd-sourced effort to spread information about where federal agents are holed up plays out mostly online.

In some instances, the unverified reports come from people who work at the hotels. Other times, hotel guests or area residents see suspected agents outside or in the lobby, or walk through parking lots in search of federal vehicles.

During the first days after the L.A. enforcement effort began, it was fairly easy to tell where agents were staying by looking for vehicles with agency logos. But it appears that they have caught on to the surveillance tactics of those who would like to see them go home.

On Monday, a Times reporter visited 13 hotels in three Southland counties — from Westchester to Garden Grove to Ontario — where federal immigration agents recently had been rumored to be staying, according to social media posts and alerts on apps and websites dedicated to tracking ICE activity. No vehicles in any of the hotels’ parking lots bore clear visual indications that they were federal agents’ cars, vans or trucks.

At five hotels, employees approached by The Times declined to comment. At three, employees agreed to speak but declined to give their names, citing corporate policies. Two of them said in brief interviews that they were not sure whether agents were staying on the premises. A third, who works at a chain hotel in Anaheim, said he had seen who he believed were ICE agents at the property last week, but they were no longer staying there.

Hotel workers showing support for protestors reflected in a window

“They didn’t bother anyone,” said the man, who declined to provide his name out of fear of reprisal from his employer or immigration authorities. “There were maybe, like, a dozen of them. It was a little concerning.”

Workers such as him have been subjected to political whiplash in recent days. Last week, President Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them.” That same day, a senior ICE official sent guidance to regional ICE officials directing them to avoid raiding farms, hotels and restaurants and instead emphasize other targets.

The development gave hotel employees hope that they were out of the crosshairs. But the Trump administration quickly reversed course, saying this week that there is now no reprieve for hotel workers and others who Trump had praised just days earlier.

Andrew Mark, a pastor at Pasadena Covenant Church, also addressed the crowd at the June 7 rally outside the AC Hotel. He said in an interview that he was impressed — but not surprised — that the community came together and forced change.

“There’s a deep pride in Pasadena. So I think that for agents to be staying in a hotel here, you feel … a sense that we don’t want this to be a place where they can stage and go out and target people,” he said. “The fact that they were based in a hotel in our community was unsettling.”

On Tuesday, Manuel Vicente sat behind his makeshift desk in a soundproof room at the Pasadena Community Job Center, which helps connect day laborers with employment opportunities. As director of Radio Jornalera, he creates audio and video content to help migrant workers, including content that informs them of the rights they have during encounters with immigration enforcement agents.

Vicente said he believes the successful protest at the AC Hotel Pasadena is an example of a saying he likes to quote, “Pueblo salva el pueblo,” or “Only the people save the people.”

“When they were kicked out of the hotel, everybody was excited,” he said. “It was a small victory, but our efforts made a difference. We need to be together to protect our community, to protect our workers.”

Business

Blumhouse acquires 50% stake in 'Saw' franchise

Published

2 days ago

June 18, 2025

Press Room

Blumhouse acquires 50% stake in 'Saw' franchise

Horror production company Blumhouse has acquired a 50% stake in the long-running “Saw” franchise, buying the rights owned by producers Oren Koules and Mark Burg, the firm said Wednesday.

Santa Monica-based Lionsgate will continue to own 50% of the franchise, retain all domestic distribution rights for new feature films and still distribute worldwide for the library films. Los Angeles-based investment firm Content Partners has also acquired a stake in the library as part of the transaction, alongside Burg’s retained share, Blumhouse said.

Financial details were not disclosed.

Blumhouse will take the lead on international distribution for new feature films and will discuss global release strategies with Lionsgate on a film-by-film basis.

Blumhouse Chief Executive Jason Blum described the deal in a statement as “a strategic investment in one of the most recognizable and successful genre properties of the last two decades.” The 10-film franchise began in 2004 and has grossed more than a billion dollars in worldwide box office revenue.

“The Saw franchise has defined a generation of horror, and its cultural impact continues to grow,” he said.

With this deal, the franchise returns to filmmaker James Wan, who directed the first “Saw” film. Wan’s production company, Atomic Monster, merged with Blumhouse last year.

“Over the course of ten chilling and thrilling ‘Saw’ films, Oren and Mark have been outstanding partners, producers and stewards of this billion-dollar franchise,” Adam Fogelson, chair of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group, said in a statement. “As they pass the baton to James — whose direction started it all — and to Jason and the team at Blumhouse, Billy couldn’t be in more gifted or twisted hands. Game on.”

The deal was the brainchild of Lionsgate Chief Executive Jon Feltheimer and Blum, according to a person familiar with the matter not authorized to comment.

The original “Saw” from 2004 was part of a wave of particularly gruesome horror movies that came to be derisively described as “torture porn.” Other examples included Eli Roth’s “Hostel.”

Horror franchise revivals have proved to be lucrative endeavors as of late, with hits including New Line’s “Final Destination Bloodlines.” The horror genre has been one of the most reliable at drawing fans to theaters in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The most recent “Saw” film, 2023’s “Saw X,” grossed $53.6 million domestically and $58.6 million internationally for a global haul of $112.2 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

“With the success of the tenth film, this felt like the right time to pass the baton,” Koules said in a statement. “I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve built with Lionsgate over the past 20 years and deeply grateful to the fans who’ve been with us since the beginning.”

Burg cited the recent death of Lionsgate film executive and executive producer Jason Constantine as part of his decision to move on, saying in a statement that it was time to “tell new stories.”

Business

Tinder bets on group dating feature to win back Gen Z

Published

2 days ago

June 17, 2025

Press Room

Tinder bets on group dating feature to win back Gen Z

Tired of navigating the online dating landscape alone? Now you can swipe right along with friends.

Tinder launched a double-dating feature Tuesday, allowing users to create joint profiles with friends to match with other pairs.

Double Date, as the feature is called, is the refined version of the failed 2016 product Tinder Social, which was discontinued in 2017 over privacy concerns and user confusion about its purpose.

To activate Double Date, users select up to three friends to create a pair with. Then they can browse and like other paired users. When both pairs like each other, a group chat opens between all four people to coordinate plans.

The feature also allows users to message individuals within a matched pair privately if they want to transition to a one-on-one conversation. Users can maintain multiple pairings with different friends while keeping their individual dating profile separate.

The feature was popular with young users when it was tested in Europe and Latin America. Cleo Long, Tinder’s head of product marketing, said the feature is meant to help relieve dating stress for younger users.

“This is a social-first experience that’s really meant to help relieve some of the pressure that we know a lot of Gen Z experiences with dating by making it more social, more fun, and bringing your friends in to help reinforce that comfort piece,” Long said.

West Hollywood-based Tinder said nearly 90% of people who tried Double Date were under 29, aligning with the company’s push to retain Gen Z.

The group dynamic appears to resonate with women, who were three times more likely to show interest in paired profiles compared to individual ones during testing. Users in group chats also sent significantly more messages — about 35% more than typical one-on-one conversations.

The company said the feature helped bring users to the platform. About 15% of people who accepted Double Date invitations were either completely new to Tinder or returning after a period of inactivity.

The positive testing results prompted Tinder to accelerate its U.S. launch ahead of schedule.

Tinder is owned by Match Group Inc., the company behind Hinge and OkCupid. It is facing mounting pressure on its business. In the first quarter of 2025, Match Group reported a 5% decline in paying subscribers across all its apps, while Tinder saw a 7% decrease in subscriptions. In response to these shifts, Match made the decision to lay off approximately 325 employees, or 13% of its workforce.

These recent losses are part of a broader pattern. Tinder’s paying user base has slipped from more than 11 million subscribers in late 2022 to roughly 9.1 million today. The consistent decline has caught the attention of activist investors, including Elliott Investment Management.

The mounting pressure led to significant leadership changes within the company. In May, Tinder Chief Executive Faye Iosotaluno announced she would step down in July after less than two years in the role. Spencer Rascoff, who was appointed Match chief executive in February to tackle the slowdown in user engagement, stepped in to lead Tinder directly.

Rascoff has outlined an ambitious technology-focused turnaround plan. In an internal memo viewed by the Wall Street Journal, he called on staff to speed up product changes and use artificial intelligence, emphasizing that employees should prioritize user experience over short-term revenue.

The company has rolled out AI features that help users create better profiles and prompt them to reconsider potentially inappropriate messages before sending them.

Tinder has also launched “The Game Game,” which uses OpenAI’s speech-to-speech technology to let users practice flirting with AI-generated personas in over-the-top scenarios designed to reduce dating anxiety through humor.

During the company’s first quarter earnings call, Rascoff noted that Match’s apps have fallen out of favor with younger daters because many saw using them as a “numbers game.” He believes Double Date can help shift perceptions, calling it less “hook-uppy” and more about having “a good time as friends.”

Tinder’s struggles reflect broader trends in the dating app industry. Dating apps have been losing their appeal amongst singles in recent years, especially Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012. Only 26% of online dating services users in the U.S. are 18 to 29 years old, while 30 to 49-year-olds comprise 61% of that same user base.

Gen Z increasingly prefers meeting potential partners through mutual friends and real-world gatherings.

Los Angeles has become a testing ground for dating alternatives that skip swiping entirely. Start-ups like El Segundo-based First Round’s on Me encourage immediate in-person meetups, while Venice’s Lox Club hosts weekly community events for singles to mingle.

Whether Double Date can reverse Tinder’s fortunes remains to be seen, but Rascoff is betting that the future of dating lies not in perfecting the swipe, but in reimagining how people connect.

Gen Z is “not a hookup generation,” he said. “They don’t drink as much alcohol, they don’t have as much sex. We need to adapt our products to accept that reality.”