6 Ways AI Might Change the Way We Worship

How artificial intelligence might be closer to impacting church music than we think.

This is Church and AI, a weekly newsletter exploring both the practical and philosophical realities of Christianity and the world of artificial intelligence. This week we’re imagining a world where sung worship meets AI.

Don’t want to read the article? Listen to the recorded version above!

If you were born before the early 1990s, there’s a high likelihood that you’ve encountered one of these:

For our millennial and Gen-Z friends: no, this is not a primitive version of Wall-E. It’s an overhead projector.

By printing on transparent acetates, people could—quite literally—sing from the same hymn sheet. For the Church, it was a revolution. It changed the way we worship together.

But it wasn’t for everyone. Here’s one complaint from a 1999 magazine article:

“The joy of singing worshipful songs is replaced by frustration in trying to learn or recall the tune.”

Some felt that without written traditional sheet music, believers would be stifled in their praises. Nowadays, overhead projectors have been replaced by digital projection, and those earlier concerns have evaporated into the past.

Here’s the reality: technology has changed the way we worship.

It inevitably does.

For reasons that are perhaps beyond the scope of today’s discussion, there seems to be a natural synergy between sung worship and technology, which leads us to wonder:

How might artificial intelligence impact the way we worship?

For better or worse, how will sung worship change as a result of this emerging technology? Here are six predictions about what the future might hold for sung worship.

Level 1: AI Song Selection

At the most basic level, a worship leader might use ChatGPT to find songs that correspond to a theme or Bible passage. This is possible today. In this example, I asked for a song or hymn that addressed the subject of communion, and it gave me some strong suggestions:

Equally, a worship leader might be able to find passages of Scripture that correspond to a song they are planning to lead. Once again, this is already possible. In the following example, ChatGPT gave me some helpful inspiration for passages that relate to Phil Wickham’s song, This is Our God.

Level 2: AI Worship Team Scheduling

Depending on the size of a worship team, scheduling can be a headache. As a former worship pastor, I’ve created more schedules than I can count. There are helpful tools such as Planning Center to ease the process, but websites like this only consider availability, not ability.

ChatGPT can help with this. The following prompt is quite long, but the results are impressive:

CHATGPT PROMPT

You will help me create a worship team schedule for eight weeks, starting from Sunday, June 4, 2023. 

Our team members are (in order of ability: 1 is strongest, then 2, and so on):

Worship Leader: 1. Jane 2. Jill 3. Fred 
Drums: 1. Chase 2. Kelvin 3. Britney 4. Frank
Bass: 1. Vernon 2. Jimmy 3. Bilbo 
Keyboard: 1. Dave H 2. Dave C 3. Dave B 4: Frodo 
Electric Guitar: 1. Michael 2. Moochal 3. Meechal 4. Michal 

Build a schedule that balances stronger and weaker musicians, and doesn't overuse any particular musicians. 

You will present the schedule as a table.

Here are the results. Although the team is relatively small, ChatGPT comes through again:

A worship pastor could very easily save the prompt and simply tweak or expand it for the desired results at scheduling time. It wouldn’t be at all surprising if services like Planning Center are already working on incorporating ChatGPT’s API into their scheduling function in the near future.

Level 3: AI Sheet Music / Chord Chart Creation

When preparing for a worship set, a worship leader or musician could simply ask AI to prepare the chord chart or sheet music for them.

At present, ChatGPT can’t handle sheet music, but it won’t be long before it will. It is very close to handling chord charts, but as yet produces less-than-ideal results as the chords are not in the right place:

ChatGPT seems to present chord charts in various formats.

Like sheet music, it is surely a matter of time until ChatGPT masters this functionality. Will it be possible for organizations like CCLI to keep tabs on copyright laws? It’s unlikely, but only time will tell.

Level 4: AI Audio Engineering

Artificial intelligence is already finding a home amongst audio engineers for small tasks like EQ, compression, and levelling. These are key parts of the sound mixing process. Help in these areas could already be useful for amateur sound techs who volunteer every now and then on a Sunday at their church.

But it’s also not beyond the realms of possibility that churches (particularly the smaller ones that represent the vast majority of congregations) could purchase digital sound desks that automatically mix a band according to the room and desired style the team is playing in.

While it’s unlikely that audio engineers will be out of the job completely, it may solve a lot of headaches for churches that don’t have the luxury of pro-level teams.

Level 5: AI Musicians

In the “contemporary worship scene,” the 2010s ushered in the era of backing tracks. Technology enabled smaller worship teams to substitute missing musicians or for larger teams to add musical flourishes that just weren’t possible in most live circumstances.

As a worship pastor, I was once a huge proponent, but a decade on, I have to say that I feel the results have been mixed.

On the one hand, the standard of music for many teams has increased, which is oftentimes a blessing to the congregation. However, they are ultimately inflexible and can’t respond to real-time changes. Worship leaders currently have to decide if the pros are worth the cons, and in our current setting, I don’t believe they are…yet.

Today, more and more companies are beginning to release AI music generators, and I believe it will only be a matter of time before AI will completely replace backing tracks as we know them.

Imagine a setting in the future where a worship leader can tell an AI engine what song and key they are playing in (verbally). Our AI musician will provide an accompaniment in real-time, responding to dynamic and tempo fluctuations and recognizing visual cues of specific worship leaders thanks to a combination of powerful image recognition capability and machine learning. It might even play multiple instruments at once!

Or picture this alternative scene: as a solo worship leader strums his guitar, he has a foot pedal with six options:

• Acoustic Guitar

• Bass

• Drums

• Electric Guitar

• Keyboard

• All In

While he strums, he can choose from any instrumental accompaniment he wants, and using a combination of pre-programmed and AI-driven technology, he can play as a full band on his own. Unlike the clunky, inflexible versions today, these AI instruments will be virtually indistinguishable from professional quality musicians.

In the right setting and with the right approach, this could be profoundly helpful—but the big question is whether AI can develop the creative abilities necessary to cope with such a task. The computational requirements of something like this is staggering but not insurmountable.

Level 6: AI/AR Contact Lenses

Increasingly, Augmented Reality (AR) will be a part of our world. As the abilities of AI improves, so will the quality of the AR experience.

Companies have already been hard at work on AR contact lenses, but the current cost of development appears to be prohibitively expensive. However, in his book Ai 2041, AI expert Kai-Fu Lee believes that the technology will be widely adopted:

Several start-ups are already working to develop XR contact lenses. Their prototypes show that displays and sensors can be embedded in contact lenses, making text and images visible. These contact lenses will still require external CPU for processing, which can be done on a mobile phone. By 2041, we anticipate the “invisibility” of contact lenses will truly cause the market to accept the product, and that challenges such as cost, privacy, and regulations will be overcome.¹

What could this mean for congregational worship?

It’s possible that AR contact lenses will become so ubiquitous that song lyrics and bible verses appear—quite literally—right before our eyes. International worshippers could choose to have their personal lyrics in their native language, projected in real-time onto their eyeballs!

(As an aside, church members could listen to the sermon, but see real-time translation into their own language. Wouldn’t this be wonderful for the hard of hearing? But that’s a conversation for another week)

Worship teams could see visual metronomes, lyrics, chords, and perhaps even sheet music, eliminating the need for music stands and charts. A world of possibilities could open regarding “visual worship experiences.” Imagine singing about the empty tomb and seeing an immersive picture so real it’s like you were right there. It might be quite profound.

The options are limitless.

What do you think?

As far as possible, I’ve tried to offer six potential scenarios that illustrate the way artificial intelligence might impact the way we worship while trying to avoid any of the ethical, theological, or leadership discussions as to whether it should.

Is this exciting or concerning? Are there great opportunities or potential problems? I’d love it if you could let me know what you think!

1. Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan, AI 2041 (New York: Currency, 2021), Kindle Loc. 3477 of 7291.