Sora: You won't believe your OpenAIs
Dad jokes aside, what does Sora's unveiling mean for the Church?
Don’t want to read the article? Watch the video instead:
A young man in a white t-shirt basks in the sun, his attention fixed on the book he’s reading.
It’s hugely unnerving.
Not because of the book’s content.
Not even because he’s sitting on a cloud.
It’s unnerving because it was entirely created using Sora, OpenAI’s new text-to-video model.
And it’s so hard to tell.
If you haven’t seen the media frenzy around the technology yet, watch the video below. It’s astounding. But as you do, remember that everything you see is entirely AI-generated.
While text-to-video content has existed for a little while, Sora has left many of its competitors in the dust. What used to take animators countless hours to produce can now be created with little more than a text prompt. But what’s more significant is that Sora goes far beyond vanilla animation; it can create the sort of realistic faces that even the most skilled visual artists could only dream of.
It’s crazy.
But it’s not perfect. If you look closely, you can still see some notable imperfections:
While it’s amusing, it’s perhaps sobering to remember that, like the Apple Vision Pro currently making waves in the augmented reality space, this is the worst iteration of the OpenAI technology that will ever exist from this moment.
As the Church, what do we do with this?
Here are a few brief suggestions:
1. Celebrate the God whose creativity is reflected in us.
As those made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), humans reflect the creativity of their Creator, the resultant handiwork (Eph. 2:10) of the One who knitted us together in our mother’s wombs (Psa. 139:13) and spoke everything into being from nothing.
How wonderful is our God, who has blessed humanity with the creative capacity to coax visual beauty out of the binary! From an endless stream of ones and zeroes come textured, reflective, powerful images like this:
Wow! Praise God.
2. Celebrate the potential uses of text-to-video content in ministry settings.
The vast majority of churches operate on a shoestring budget. The democratization of such incredible technology can utterly unleash the creative capacities of believers everywhere. The Church could use this technology to support corporate worship (e.g., visual backgrounds for sung worship), social media, or even evangelistic storytelling on mediums like YouTube or TikTok. I’m sure there will be countless use cases that we can barely comprehend at this point.
3. Recognize the challenges of this sort of technology to society.
In a world that is already dangerously divided, the potential for this kind of technology to exacerbate the rift is obvious. It won’t be long before AI-generated content—which, let’s remember, will only improve over time—perpetuates misinformation, manipulates its consumers, and perhaps even influences elections. That’s a big deal. As society grapples with a growing trust deficit, the proliferation of billions of hyper-realistic images and videos should cause us some concern.
4. Recognize the implications for the body of Christ.
It’s impossible for the Church not to be impacted by a technological development as monumental as this. As I’ve written elsewhere, it’s vital that we point to objective truth in an increasingly subjective, post-truth world where trust is spiralling (Psa. 119:160; Isa. 40:8; John 17:17; Col. 2:8; 2 Tim. 3:16-17).
Believers: hold fast to the truth of God.
Recognize that these societal challenges will inevitably impact the Church. Ask the Lord for God-given wisdom; the sort of grace-given, awe-driven intimacy with God that results in Christlike character and an ability to discern what is true from what is false. To cling to what is good and flee from what is evil. To know that the Word of God is—and will remain—our measuring stick for truth above all else.
There’s much more that could be said, of course.
But I’m interested to know what you think. Is Sora going to be positive or negative for the Church? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below (or email me. I like receiving emails from Church and AI readers).
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