Blog RSS Feed

Archive for the ‘AI’ Category

Newer Entries »

Actually Good AI-Generated Bible Art with DALL·E 2

Monday, July 25th, 2022

OpenAI recently released DALL·E 2, an AI that takes written text and turns it into an image. A project I’ve been working on takes stories from Genesis and Luke, feeds them to the AI, and creates images out of the text. For example:

An oil painting of a giant whale swallowing a city. In the style of Hieronymus Bosch.
“No sign will be given this generation except the sign of Jonah” (Luke 11:29–32). This image doesn’t literally reflect Jesus’ words here (he doesn’t mean a giant whale), but in my opinion it captures the intent of his saying, that that signs that he’s the Messiah are as obvious to anyone willing to hear as a whale landing on a city.

See all 828 AI-generated Bible images in this project. Below is a selection of my favorites, followed by a longer description of my methodology. Hover over any of the images to see the prompt that generated it.

Noah the patriarch planting a vineyard of grapes and dancing in it while drunk. Oil painting.
Noah getting drunk in his vineyard (Gen 9:20–21). You don’t see this story illustrated often.
A family tree made of glass, with the different colors representing different family members. The tree is spreading across the globe. Inspired by Dale Chihuly
Descendants of Noah (Gen 10). A Chihuly-inspired glass sculpture of a family tree.
Melchizedek the king of Salem presenting bread and wine to the patriarch Abraham. Pointilistic drawing in the style of Seurat.
Melchizedek presents bread and wine to Abram (Gen 14:18–24). Pointilism in the style of Seurat.
A meteoric fireball exploding above an ancient city. Oil painting in the style of Hieronymus Bosch.
Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19:24–25). In the style of Hieronymous Bosch.
A painting in the style of Gustav Klimt depicting twins infants, a dark-haired Jacob and red-haird Esau, wrestling in the womb.
Jacob and Esau wrestle in the womb (Gen 25:19–26). Another part of the story you don’t often see illustrated.
A tiny sculpture of Rachel and Leah fighting over a handful of mandrakes, with the sculpture itself being made out of mandrakes. In the style of British sculptor Henry Moore.
Rachel and Leah arguing over mandrakes (Gen 30:14–15). Don’t remember this story? I didn’t either. But the tiny sculpture conveys the bitterness and pettiness of Rachel and Leah.
Pointilist drawing of Jacob and the Lambs. This drawing depicts a shepherd and his flock of dark and spotted sheep and goats. The colors are warm and soothing, with speckles throughout echoing the speckles on the animals.
Jacob and the spotted lambs (Gen 30:25–43). I imagine that this image is of Laban, who looks down to realize that all the sheep are spotted. The pointilistic style reinforces that theme.
A sculpture of two stone heaps with a figures of two men, Jacob and Laban, leaning on them in the background, carved in basalt by Michelangelo.
Jacob and Laban build stone pillars (Gen 31:45–54). This image depicts Jacob and Laban after they’ve built two stone pillars of friendship. I think it’s funny how it looks like one of them is pushing the other off, reflecting that maybe erecting these pillars hasn’t resolved everything between them.
A painting with of a family tree in various colors representing different tribes. In the style of Mark Rothko.
The descendants of Esau (Gen 36). Another family tree, this one supposedly in the style of Rothko but is much more representational than his work usually is. The AI does a surprisingly great job at artistic family trees.
A hand holding colorful rags in the foreground, while in the distance a caravan of camels recedes into the hills. The background has muted colors, while the foreground is dark and vibrant.
Joseph’s brothers sell him (Gen 37:28). This photorealistic image reflects the rare time when the AI gave me exactly what I wanted. Here I imagine that Reuben is holding the fragments of Joseph’s robe while he watches the merchants carry Joseph away.
A group of hungry ancient Egyptians waiting in line for food. Oil painting in the style of Edward Hopper.
People come to Egypt for food (Gen 41:56–57). A Great Depression-style breadline in Egypt because of the famine in Joseph’s time.
A closeup of an ornate, empty silver cup lying in a burlap sack filled with grain, with a shocked face of a bearded man appearing in a reflection on its surface..
The silver cup (Gen 44:12). Joseph hides his silver cup in the grain sack of one of his brothers.
Ancient Egyptian people running in panic from many frogs. In the style of a 1990s Saturday morning cartoon.
The plague of frogs (Exod 8:1–15). In the style of a 1990s Saturday-morning cartoon, this image doesn’t exactly convey the story, but it sure is fun.
A woman wearing makeup leaping through an open window onto a balcony with three men behind her. In the style of a 1990s newspaper comic strip.
The death of Jezebel (2Kgs 9:30–33). The man wearing the high heel in the background, as though he stole it from Jezebel, sells this image for me.
A 16-bit videogame rendering of the Mary, Joseph, and and baby Jesus in the manger.
Birth of Christ (Luke 2:6–7). In the style of a 16-bit video game.
"The Root of All Evil" by Damien Hirst: A conceptual work consisting of a large axe suspended in a glass case, representing the destructive power of sin.
“The ax is at the root of the tree” (Luke 3:9). A huge sculpture that captures the message.
An angry crowd pursues Jesus to a desert cliff, while he walks calmly away from them. An illustration in the style of Beatrix Potter.
The people of Nazareth pursue Jesus to a cliff (Luke 4:28–30). I’m not sure why there’s a sheep–possibly because the prompt asks for an image in the style of Beatrix Potter.
A scene from the perspective of a fish looking up at an ancient fishing boat with fishermen throwing a net. In the distance on the shore is Jesus. 3D render in Unreal Engine.
Jesus calls his first disciples (Luke 5:1–11). A 3D render from the perspective of the fish.
A closeup photo a plank of wood with an eyeball symbol burned into it. Macro lens (Sigma 105mm F2.8).
“First take the plank out of your eye” (Luke 6:41–42). Or, in this case, “First take the eye out of your plank.”
A sculpture of a human head, with the mouth open and spilling out a waterfall of words. The words are made up of heavy metal type, weighing down the head. Think playful and witty, like a work by Jeff Koons.
“For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45)
A lifesize house made out of sand with waves about to reach it with a man just visible inside it. Photo taken with a telephoto lens.
The house built on the sand (Luke 6:49)
An overturned, upside-down clay bowl on a table with light peeking from it. The light under the bowl is the only source of light. Photo in a dark room with a wide-angle lens.
A lamp on a stand (Luke 8:16). I could never persuade the AI to create a light under a bowl, only shining on it in various ways.
Jesus Calms the Storm in a large fishing boat with his disciples looking on. Digital painting by Expressionist artist Wassily Kandinsky
Jesus calms the storm (Luke 8:22–25)
A sculptural installation in the style of contemporary artist Anish Kapoor, inspired by the glowing light and bright colors of the transfiguration of Jesus on a hilltop.
The Transfiguration (Luke 9:26–36). I feel like this photo captures how someone might create a hilltop installation to reflect Jesus’ transfiguration.
A detailed pastel drawing of a fox or bird, with looking over their shoulder at the viewer. This could be interpreted as a metaphor for how humans often forget about or ignore those who are struggling, even though they are right in front of us.
“Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). This fox looks adorably resentful.
A painting of a field with a mechanical plow in the foreground and a worker sitting on it. The painting is meant to capture the beauty of the field and the hard work that goes into harvest. In the style of French painter Claude Monet.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few” (Luke 10:2). If the workers are few, the American solution is to industrialize the process.
A portrait of a young boy holding a fish in one hand and a snake in the other, with a look of confusion or disappointment on his face. Done in a naïve or folk art style, in the cheerful colors of artist Grandma Moses.
“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?” (Luke 11:11). In the style of Grandma Moses.
A sculpture of an eye, with a lightbulb in the center, symbolizing the idea that our eyes are the lamps of our bodies. In the style of Chinese artist Zhang Huan.
“The eye is the lamp of the body” (Luke 11:33–36)
A female defendant speaking to a courtroom with a flame above her head symbolizing the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In the style of a courtroom sketch artist Jane Rosenberg.
“Do not worry about how you will defend yourselves” (Luke 12:11–12)
A memorial by Maya Lin for the 18 people who suffered when the Tower of Siloam fell in ancient Jerusalem.
The fall of the tower of Siloam (Luke 13:4). Jesus briefly alludes to this event, and this memorial, in the style of Maya Lin, captures the feeling of a contemporary memorial. Each line represents a victim of the collapse (though the AI only generated 14 lines, not 18).
A mustard tree with birds in its branches carved into an actual mustard seed. Extreme closeup, macro lens photo.
“It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds perched in its branches” (Luke 13:19). Here we have tiny birds nesting in a mustard plant.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, "He Who Has Ears to Hear, Let Him Hear" – A vibrant and textured painting of an ear with patterns and symbols inspired by African and Caribbean cultures.
“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear” (Luke 14:35). This work captures the urgency of the statement, in my opinion.
A sculpture of a sheep made out of scrap metal and found objects. The sheep is covered in rust and looks like it is about to fall apart. Inspired by Pablo Picasso.
The parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:4–7). A sculpture in the style of Picasso.
A work of pop art in which money is portrayed as a god-like figure, demanding attention and worship. In the style of Takashi Murakami.
“You cannot serve both God and money” (Luke 16:13). Here the money becomes personified as a false god.
"Tree" by Alma Thomas: A painting of a tree with colorful and expressionistic leaves planted in the ocean.
“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you” (Luke 17:6)
Tilt-shift photo of a camel in the eye of a needle. Extreme close-up, macro 200mm lens.
“A camel through the eye of a needle” (Luke 18:25). The camel is eyeing the needle and deciding that it can’t fit through.
"Jesus Cleansing the Temple", 2013 cubist painting. Orozco's painting depicts the event as a clash of colors, with Jesus' red robe in bright contrast to the blue robes of the money changers.
Jesus drives out the moneychangers (Luke 19:45–46). I feel like one of the moneychangers is dressed like a luchador for some reason.
All Are Alive, 2016, Korean finger painting. A painting of brightly colored flowers and animals, showing that everything is alive.
“God is not the God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38). This image conveys more the sentiment than the content of the passage.
The Poor Widow's Mite, Georgia O'Keeffe, 1918. Watercolor. O'Keeffe's watercolor depicts the story of the widow's offering in a unique and beautiful way. The woman's face is hidden in shadow, and the coins in her hand are shining and rose-colored.
The widow’s mite (Luke 21:1–4). This piece, in the style of Georgia O’Keeffe, offers an interpretation of the widow that captures her emotions as she’s donating (possibly her last) two coins to the Temple treasury.
"The 30 Pieces of Silver" by Gustav Klimt, 1908. Oil and silver on canvas. A dark and atmospheric print showing Judas counting out the pieces of silver. He is surrounded by darkness, and the silver coins gleam in the light.
Judas agrees to betray Jesus (Luke 22:1–6). I like that he’s dressed in silver coins.
"Gethsemane," 1903, painting by Arnold Böcklin. A dark and atmospheric work, depicting Jesus surrounded by ominous, twisted trees. The sense of foreboding is palpable, and the viewer feels as if they are witnessing a private moment of prayer and anguish.
The Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:39–46). Here Jesus is having a vision of what he’s about to endure.
A colorful abstract painting inspired by stained glass windows, depicting Mary and her family in geometric shapes as they visit Jesus. Modernist painting in the style of Carlos Cruz-Diez.
Jesus’ crucifixion (Luke 23:26–43)
The Road to Emmaus, 2021, oil on canvas. A modern take on the classic biblical story, featuring three men walking along a dusty road, deep in conversation. The sun sets in the background, casting a warm, orange glow on the scene.
The road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35)
"Fire from Heaven" - An abstract painting with bold red and orange tones, reminiscent of fire, to represent fire coming down from heaven and Jesus' rebuke of two of his disciples. At the bottom is a peaceful ancient city in contrasting cool colors. In the style of Clyfford Stil.
Opening of the abyss (Rev 9:1–2)

Background

DALL·E 2 is a text-to-image generator that takes a text prompt (“Realistic oil painting of a cat”) and generates a set of four images that it thinks matches that prompt. DALL·E doesn’t render human faces well, and sometimes it goes completely off-track in its suggestions, but its quality often astonished me.

OpenAI has another AI, GPT-3, that I used to generate many of the ideas for DALL·E prompts. I wanted to explore DALL·E using a wide variety of styles and artists, and I have limitations and biases when it comes to my knowledge of art history. GPT-3 cast a wider net of styles and artists than I would’ve come up with on my own (although GPT-3 loves Rembrandt and Banksy and mentioned them in many completions). Each GPT-3 completion costs around half a cent, and each text prompt to DALL·E generated an average of 1.3 usable images, bringing the all-in cost per image to around $0.12, or around $99 total for this project. (I generated most of these images during DALL·E’s free preview, however.)

The GPT-3 prompts I used evolved over time, but this one is emblematic:

Suggest 5 unique concept ideas for a work of visual art inspired by Luke 14:7-11 (do not pick the place of honor) in the Bible. Include art direction and a specific medium and artist to emulate. Include artists from a variety of eras, styles, and media. Try for an unusual perspective. Title, year, medium. Description.

And here’s what GPT-3 suggests:

  1. “Turning the Tables,” a sculptural installation in which upside-down tables are suspended from the ceiling, representing how Jesus turned the power dynamic upside-down when he said that the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Inspired by Mexican artist Diego Rivera.
  2. “Remember the Poor,” a series of paintings or drawings depicting the poor and needy from around the world, as a reminder that Jesus said we should always remember the poor. Inspired by the work of 19th century French painter Jean-Francois Millet.
  3. “The Banquet,” a painting or series of paintings depicting a large banquet table spread with food, similar to the one described in the story of the great banquet in Luke 14, to emphasize the importance of hospitality. Inspired by Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
  4. “The Place of Honor,” a painting or sculpture that shows a solitary figure in the place of honor at a banquet table, to represent how Jesus said that the one who takes the place of honor will be the last. Inspired by Chinese painter Zhang Daqian.
  5. “The Outcast,” a painting or sculpture of a figure who is excluded from the banquet, to represent how Jesus said that those who are last will be first. Inspired by Nigerian-born British artist Yinka Shonibare.

I thought #1 was especially interesting as a concept, though I couldn’t persuade DALL·E to produce something good with it. Diego Rivera, further, is a painter rather than a sculptor, so the suggestion wouldn’t work as-is. These ideas often served as a starting place for the prompt I ultimately entered into DALL·E.

I appreciate the irony that I, as a human, am the least-creative part of this whole process; I’m largely copy-pasting content between AIs and then selecting the best output while the AI does most of the lateral thinking.

See all the AI-generated Bible story images.

Posted in AI, Art | 2 Comments »

Terrify Children with These AI-Generated Bible Story Trading Cards

Wednesday, December 1st, 2021

When I think about the story of David and Goliath, I like to picture David as having an extra leg instead of a left arm, ready to throw a whole torso at Goliath, who’s standing behind him amorphously in Sauron-style armor. And thanks to the power of AI, now my imagination has become reality:

AI-generated picture of David and Goliath.

Not really. I gave an AI the text prompt: “David fighting Goliath by a river,” and then it created the image by itself. The AI in question is WOMBO Dream, a new app that generates a trading-card style image based on text you give it. While this image was the most horrifying of all the images it generated for me, it did a decent job on many Bible-related prompts. Below is a gallery of my favorites.

The AI did best with prompts relating to the angel announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds:

AI-generated image of an angel appearing in the sky to shepherds.
prompt: Angel Gabriel appears to shepherds and sheep in a field at night
AI-generated image of an angel appearing to shepherds with a star in the background.
prompt: Angel Gabriel appears to shepherds and sheep in a field at night

The star in the last image shows up again in this rendition of the adoration of the magi:

AI-generated image of the adoration of the magi.
prompt: adoration of the magi

Gethsemane captures the essence of the scene, with a somewhat abstract robed figure collapsed while others pray:

A robed figure in the foreground falls down while figures in the back pray in a garden.
prompt: Gethsemane

The creation of the world shows the waters above and the waters below:

Two primeval spheres separated by the sky.
prompt: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

Perennially favorite Bible verse Jeremiah 29:11 gets a literal rendering with a giant eye in the sky:

An eye watches over someone with outspread arms,
prompt: I know the thoughts that I think toward you saith the Lord thoughts of peace and not of evil

Here the rainbow in the Noah story becomes an instrument of vengeance:

A rainbow cloud attacks the earth,
prompt: Noah ark flood rainbow

I call this one “The Kiddie Table at The Last Supper” (are those French fries?):

A table in front of a traditional Last Supper scene.
prompt: The Last Supper Jesus

What it’s really doing here is representing the related scenes multiple times in the same image, which is actually quite common in historical artistic depictions of biblical stories. That’s how I interpret what’s going on in this scene of Elijah being fed by ravens, where I think he appears both in the foreground and in the background:

prompt: prophet Elijah being fed by ravens

Finally, here are two images where the AI came up with a conceptually interesting (to me) idea that a human artist could polish and make something thought-provoking. First, here’s a representation of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness about turning stones to bread. Here there are stones that look like bread to heighten the temptation:

Bread-looking stones among rocks.
prompt: Jesus temptation in the wilderness turn these stones to bread

And finally, the Tower of Babel made out of words. That’s just clever:

The Tower of Babel made of what looks like words on paper.
prompt: tower of Babel confusion of languages

Posted in AI | Comments Off on Terrify Children with These AI-Generated Bible Story Trading Cards

Using Machine Learning to Enhance the Resolution of Bible Maps

Friday, March 1st, 2019

In a previous post, I discussed how 3D software could improve the resolution of Bible maps by fractally enhancing a digital elevation model and then synthetically creating landcover. In this post I’ll look at how machine learning can increase the resolution of freely available satellite images to generate realistic-looking historical maps.

Acquiring satellite imagery

The European Sentinel-2 satellites take daily photos of much of the earth at a ten-meter optical resolution (i.e., one pixel represents a ten-meter square on the ground). The U.S. operates a similar system, Landsat 8, with a fifteen-meter resolution. Commercial vendors offer much higher-resolution imagery, similar to what you find in Google Maps, at a prohibitive cost (thousands of dollars). By contrast, both Sentinel-2 and Landsat are government-operated and have freely available imagery. Here’s a comparison of the two, zoomed in to level 16 (1.3 meters per pixel), or well above their actual resolution:

Sentinel-2 shows more washed-out colors at a higher resolution than Landsat 8.

The Sentinel-2 imagery looks sharper thanks to its higher resolution, though the processing to correct the color overexposes the light areas, in my opinion. Because I want to start with the sharpest imagery, for this post I’ll use Sentinel-2.

I use Sentinel Playground to find a scene that doesn’t have a lot of clouds and then download the L2A, or atmosphere- and color-corrected, imagery. If I were producing a large-scale map that involved stitching together multiple photos, I’d use something like Sen2Agri to create a mosaic of many images, or a “basemap” (as in Google Maps). (Doing so is complicated and beyond the scope of this post.)

I choose a fourteen-kilometer-wide scene from January 2018 showing a mix of developed and undeveloped land near the northwest corner of the Dead Sea at a resolution of ten meters per pixel. I lower the gamma to 0.5 so that the colors approximately match the colors in Google Maps to allow for easier comparisons.

The Sentinel-2 scene.

Increasing resolution

“Enhance!” is a staple of crime dramas, where a technician magically increases the resolution of a photo to provide crucial evidence needed by the plot. Super-resolution doesn’t work as well in reality as it does in fiction, but machine learning algorithms have increased in their sophistication in the past two years, and I thought it would be worth seeing how they performed on satellite photos. Here’s a detail of the above image, as enlarged by four different algorithms, plus Google Maps as the “ground truth.”

Comparison of four different super-resolution algorithms plus Google Maps, as discussed in the following paragraphs.

Each algorithm increases the original resolution by four times, providing a theoretical resolution of 2.5 meters per pixel.

The first, “raw pixels,” is the simplest; each pixel in the original image now occupies sixteen pixels (4×4). It was instantaneous to produce.

The second, “Photoshop Preserve Details 2.0,” uses the machine-learning algorithm built into recent versions of Photoshop. This algorithm took a few seconds to run. Generated image (1 MB).

The third, ESRGAN as implemented in Runway, reflects a state-of-the-art super-resolution algorithm for photos, though it’s not optimized for satellite imagery. This algorithm took about a minute to run on a “cloud GPU.” Generated image (1 MB).

The fourth, Gigapixel, uses a proprietary algorithm to sharpen photos; it also isn’t optimized for satellite imagery. This algorithm took about an hour to run on a CPU. Generated image (6 MB).

The fifth, Google Maps, reflects actual high-resolution (my guess is around 3.7 meters per pixel) photography.

Discussion

To my eye, the Gigapixel enlargement looks sharpest; it plausibly adds detail, though I don’t think anyone would mistake it for an actual 2.5-meter resolution satellite photo.

The stock ESRGAN enlargement doesn’t look quite as good to me; however, in my opinion, ESRGAN offers a lot of potential if tweaked. The algorithm already shows promise in upscaling video-game textures–a use the algorithm’s creators didn’t envision–and I think that taking the existing model developed by the researchers and training it further on satellite photos could produce higher-quality images.

I didn’t test the one purpose-built satellite image super-resolution algorithm I found because it’s designed for much-higher-resolution (thirty-centimeter) input imagery.

Removing modern features

One problem with using satellite photos as the base for historical maps involves dealing with modern features: agriculture, cities, roads, etc., that weren’t around in the same form in the time period the historical map is depicting. Machine learning presents a solution for this problem, as well; Photoshop’s content-aware fill allows you to select an area of an image for Photoshop to plausibly fill in with similar content. For example, here’s the Gigapixel-enlarged image with human-created features removed by content-aware fill:

Modern features no longer appear in the image.

I made these edits by hand, but at scale you could use OpenStreetMap’s land-use data to mask candidate areas for content-aware replacement:

Data from OpenStreetMap shows roads, urban areas, farmland, etc.

Conclusion

If you want to work with satellite imagery to produce a high-resolution basemap for historical or Bible maps, then using machine learning both to sharpen them and to remove modern features could be a viable, if time-consuming, process. The image in this post covers about 100 square kilometers; modern Israel is over 20,000 square kilometers. And this scene contains a mostly undeveloped area; large-scale cities are harder to erase with content-aware fill because there’s less surrounding wilderness for the algorithm to work with. But if you’re willing to put in the work, the result could be a free, plausibly realistic, reasonably detailed map over which you can overlay your own data.

Posted in AI, Geo | 1 Comment »

Google Will Now Answer Your Theological Questions

Saturday, April 14th, 2018

Google just announced an AI-powered experiment called Talk to Books, which lets you enter a query and find passages in books that are semantically similar to your query, not merely passages that happen to match the keywords you chose. For theology- and Bible-related questions, it often presents an evangelical perspective, perhaps because U.S. evangelical publishers have been eager for Google to index their books.

Here are some questions I asked it, with a sample response (not always the first):

Does God exist? “Creatures may or may not exist; God must exist; He cannot not exist.” — The Catholic Collection.

Why does a good God allow suffering? “Either you somehow deny the world’s suffering (that is, suffering is eventually shown to belong to a higher order of goodness) or else one or more of God’s characteristics (existence, benevolence, omnipotence) are denied.” — A Philosophy of Evil.

When does the rapture happen? “Depending upon one’s view, the rapture occurs either before, during, or after a seven-year period of intense trial and trauma on earth known as the tribulation, as recorded in Revelation 6-19.” — Armed Groups: Studies in National Security, Counterterrorism, and Counterinsurgency.

Where is Jesus now? “Wherever you are as you read these words, he is present.” — And the Angels Were Silent. Some of the other answers, like “He is on the shore of the Sea of Galilee with Andrew and other apostles,” are on the strange side–even in context, the answer is wrong, as this sentence is talking about Peter, not Jesus.

It totally whiffs on Who is Abraham’s father? Rather than interpreting the question and providing a factual answer, it presents a number of passages describing how Abraham is the father of Isaac or of Isaac’s descendants. These passages relate semantically but don’t answer the question.

Answers to 'What is the role of the Holy Spirit' include responses from an NKJV study Bible and Billy Graham.

Posted in AI | 1 Comment »

Rise of the Robosermon

Sunday, April 29th, 2012

In a recent issue of Wired, Steven Levy writes about Narrative Science, a company that uses data to write automated news stories. Right now, they mostly deal in data-intensive fields like sports and finance, but the company is confident that it will easily expand into other areas—the company’s co-founder even predicts that an algorithm will win a Pulitzer Prize in the next five years.

In February 2012, I attended a session at the TOC Conference given in part by Kristian Hammond, the CTO and co-founder of Narrative Science. During the session, Hammond mentioned that sports stories have a limited number of angles (e.g., a “blowout win” or a “come-from-behind victory”)—you can probably sit down and think up a fairly comprehensive list in short order. Even in fictional sports stories, writers only use around sixty common tropes as part of the narrative. Once you have an angle (or your algorithm has decided on one), you just slot in the relevant data, add a little color commentary, and you have your story.

At the time, I was struggling to understand how automated content could apply to Bible study; Levy’s article leads me to think that robosermons, or sermons automatically generated by a computer program, are the way of the future.

Parts of a Robosermon

Futurama has a robot preacher. I've never seen these episodes, so hopefully this image isn't terribly heretical. After all, from a data perspective, sermons don’t differ much from sports stories. In particular, they have three components:

First, as with sports stories, sermons follow predictable structures and patterns. David Schmitt of Concordia Theological Seminary suggests a taxonomy of around thirty sermon structures. Even if this list isn’t comprehensive, it would probably take, at most, 100 to 200 structures to categorize nearly all sermons.

Second, sermons deal with predictable content: whereas sports have box scores, sermons have Bible texts and topics. A sermon will probably deal with a passage from the Bible in some way—the 31,000 verses in the Bible comprise a large but manageable set of source material (especially since most sermons involve a passage, not a single verse; you can probably cut this list down to around 2,000 sections). Topically, SermonCentral.com lists only 500 sermon topics in their database of 120,000 sermons. The power-law popularity distribution (i.e., the 80/20 rule) of verses preached on (on SermonCentral.com are 1,200 sermons on John 1 compared to seven on Numbers 35) and topics (1,400 sermons on “Jesus’ teachings” vs. four on “morning”) means that you can categorize most sermons using a small portion of the available possibilities.

Third, sermons generally involve illustrations or stories, much like the color commentary of sports stories. Finding raw material for illustrations shouldn’t present a problem to a computer program; a quick search on Amazon turns up 1,700 books on sermon illustrations and an additional 10,000 or so on general anecdotes. You can probably extract hundreds of thousands of illustrations from just these sources. Alternately, if a recent news story relates to your topic, the system can add the relevant parts to your sermon with little trouble (especially if a computer wrote the news story to begin with).

Application

You end up being able to say, “I want to preach a sermon on Philippians 2 that emphasizes Christ’s humility as a model for us.” Then—and here’s the part that doesn’t exist yet but that technology like Narrative Science’s will provide—an algorithm suggests, say, an amusing but poignant anecdote to start with, followed by three points of exegesis, exhortation, and application, and finishing with a trenchant conclusion. You tweak the content a bit, throwing in a shout-out to a behind-the-scenes parishioner who does a lot of work but rarely receives recognition, and call it done.

Why limit sermons to pastors, though? Why shouldn’t churchgoers be able to ask for custom sermons that fit exactly their circumstances? “I’d like a ten-part audio sermon series on Revelation from a dispensational perspective where each sermon exactly fits the length of my commute.” “Give me six weeks of premarital devotions for my boyfriend and me. I’ve always been a fan of Charles Spurgeon, so make it sound like he wrote them.”

Levy opens his Wired article with an anecdote about how grandparents would find articles about their grandchildren’s Little League games just as interesting as “anything on the sports pages.” He doesn’t mention that what they really want is a recap with their grandchild as the star (or at least as a strong supporting character—it’s like one of those children’s books where you customize the main character’s name and appearance). Robosermons let you tailor the sermon’s content so that your specific problems or questions form the central theme.

The logical end of this technology is a sermonbot that develops a following of eager listeners and readers, in the same way that an automated newspaper reporter would create fans on its way to winning a Pulitzer.

You may argue that robosermons diminish the role of the Holy Spirit in preparing sermons, or that they amount to plagiarism. I’m not inclined to disagree with you.

Conclusion

Building a robosermon system involves five components: (1) sermon structures; (2) Bible verses; (3) topics; (4) illustrations; and (5) technology like Narrative Science’s to put everything together coherently. It would also be helpful to have (6) a large set of existing sermons to serve as raw data. It’s a complicated problem but hardly an insurmountable one over the next ten years, should someone want to tackle it.

I’m not sure they should; that way lies robopologetics and robovangelism.

If you’re not an algorithm and you want to know how to prepare and deliver a sermon, I suggest listening to this 29-part course on preaching by Bryan Chapell at Biblical Training. It’s free and full of homiletic goodness.

Posted in AI, Churches, Sermons, Technology | Comments Off on Rise of the Robosermon

Newer Entries »