I know that AI has recently been receiving more and more negative attention. People are understandably frustrated by the influx of "AI slop" flooding the internet, and there is a growing resentment toward consumer electronics pushing AI into every corner of our daily lives. People are tired of bizarre, low-effort images, deepfakes designed to deceive, and video that looks almost real but feels deeply unsettling. There is also justified anger when people use AI to generate music, pass it off as human-made, and try to profit from that deception. These are all legitimate, honest concerns.
However, for some of us, AI is one of the few avenues available to actually bring our creative visions to life.
I use AI to create music, but the lyrics are entirely my own. They begin as raw ideas that I shape into poetry, a craft I’ve practiced since high school. While I can adapt my poems into lyrics, I have no talent for composing music; my natural rhythm is about as subtle as a clanging cymbal.
Tools like Suno have allowed me to set music to words I wrote years ago, songs I never truly expected to hear sung aloud. To me, AI is a tool, not a shortcut to unearned status. I don't pretend to be a trained musician. I am simply creating things I genuinely want to hear, and I listen to them often. I have even created two virtual "bands" for my projects: one is a synthwave project called The Empty Space, and the other focuses on heavy metal, called Echoes of the Core. I have uploaded their tracks to the major streaming platforms. Would I love it if hundreds or thousands of people listened to them? Of course. Every song carries a piece of my history and means something deeply to me. But even if no one else ever listens, I am grateful that I can.
I believe public sentiment toward AI would be vastly different if it weren't so frequently used to deceive. That deception is where the real problem lies.
The frustration people feel toward AI isn't actually a grievance with algorithms or code; it is a grievance with human nature. AI doesn't inherently possess a desire to trick, cheat, or take shortcuts, but people do. Throughout history, whenever a disruptive new technology or medium has emerged, human beings have immediately found a way to use it for manipulation.
The written word is a great example. While the printing press successful in bringing printed knowledge around the world, it also quickly birthed mass-produced propaganda, forged historical documents, and sensationalized yellow journalism designed to manipulate public opinion.
A similar shift occurred with the invention of photography and film. Initially, cameras were celebrated as objective capturers of absolute truth. Yet, almost immediately, people figured out how to stage photos, manipulate negatives, and use trick photography to sell fake miracles, fabricated monsters, and political lies to an unsuspecting public.
Even within music, digital audio has a long history of this tension. The introduction of synthesizers, samplers, and pitch-correction software like AutoTune caused major moral panics in the music industry. The issue was rarely the technology itself, but rather the instances where listeners felt cheated by artists who used these tools to mimic a level of vocal or instrumental talent they did not actually possess.
Deception ultimately erodes social trust. When we can no longer believe what we see, hear, or read, society fractures into suspicion. AI slop and fake music are simply the latest, fastest tools used to exploit human attention and wallets by pretending a machine's output is an authentic human soul.
From a Christian standpoint, deception is not a modern tech issue; it is a spiritual one. Scripture identifies Satan not just as a liar, but as the "father of lies" (John 8:44). Deception is framed as a fundamental distortion of God’s character, as God is truth itself.
When people use AI to pass off AI-generated content entirely as their own human labor for profit or praise, they are engaging in a form of falsehood. It feeds into the sins of pride, where people seek unearned admiration, and greed, where they chase unearned wealth.
For Christians navigating this new landscape, discernment is paramount. In 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Paul told us to "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good." This applies directly to how Christians interact with and use AI, beginning with the fundamental duty of honesty. If a Christian uses AI to assist in writing, art, or music, transparency becomes a matter of integrity. It is fundamental. Hiding the use of a tool to earn praise or to sell a false narrative directly violates the command to speak the truth in love.
Believers are also called to value the soul over mere efficiency. God created humans in His image gifting mankind with unique creative and reflective capacities. While using tools to assist our personal weaknesses, such as my natural lack of rhythm, can be a beautiful expression of stewardship, using AI to completely replace human thought, relationship, and genuine spiritual expression strips away the very heart of what makes creativity meaningful.
Ultimately, technology changes, but the human heart remains the same. AI can amplify our creative ideas, but if we are not careful, it can just as easily amplify our capacity for dishonesty. Walking out faith in an AI-driven world means ensuring that our tools remain our servants, and that our output always reflects the truth.
Oh and all my verse images in this blog as well as my mother's sermons blog are AI generated.
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