My head was bowed in prayer when I heard something strange coming from the pulpit.
A friend of mine was standing in front of our church’s congregation of 200 people, praying over the day’s offerings. His words bore the marks of AI writing that made me wince: “It’s not X—it’s Y” and a conspicuous preference for lists of three.
After the service, I confronted my friend. Immediately, he admitted the prayer had been written by AI. “I just asked Chat to write me a short offertory prayer,” he told me sheepishly. In my Presbyterian church, it’s customary for congregants like my friend to stand at the pulpit and give the call to worship or the offertory prayer. He was a nervous public speaker, he said, and AI writes well enough.
Since then, I’ve started to question whether other prayers I’ve heard have been written with the help of, well, a higher power.
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