A well-known US pastor and author is warning the Christian public to beware of AI deepfakes of Billy Graham and other Christian leaders.
Joshua Pauling, the vicar at All Saints Lutheran Church in Charlotte, North Carolina wrote this article for Mere Orthodoxy.
Recently a church member sent me a link to a Billy Graham sermon on YouTube to get my take on it. I obliged.
The voice sounded like a young Graham from what I could tell, but something didn’t smell right.
Maybe it was the patterns of speech, the cliches, or the voice inflection.
CLUES THAT VIDEO WAS A FAKE
“Graham” referenced a 2016 Vatican statement “Ad resurgendum cum Christo.” He had stopped preaching years earlier.
Strike one.
In the sermon “Graham” urged listeners to “share your thoughts in the comments below.”
Strike two.
As the sermon neared its end, “Graham” said, “this video on screen is for you.”
Strike three; you’re out.
Game over. Clearly, an audio deepfake. I scrolled through the comments to see if anyone called this out for what it was: a deception, a sham, all in the name of Jesus.
YOUTUBE IS FILLED WITH FAKE CHANNELS, SOME CHRISTIAN
Turns out this YouTube channel Faith in Action was filled with Billy Graham “recordings.” Were they all deepfakes? Was this whole channel AI-generated?
And what about the commenters who heaped fulsome praise on Graham’s sermon? Did they not catch the clear clues? Were they bots too?
Scanning the comments revealed another dead giveaway.
The YouTube channel “replied” to what seems to be every comment with the stock phrase: “God bless you!”
A RELATIVELY BENIGN EXAMPLE OF DEEPFAKE TECHNOLOGY
This is, to be sure, a relatively benign and elementary example of deepfake technology.
And it should not be all that surprising, considering that Twitter/X has been dealing with increasing bot traffic for years.
But the quality and believability of audio and video deepfakes is rapidly improving.
And they are being put to much more nefarious and sinister purposes than trying to monetise people’s love for Christian heroes like Billy Graham.
FAKE VIDEO HAD OVER HALF A MILLION VIEWS
The point is the same no matter the deepfake’s form: the whole edifice is built on artifice, a deception that will wreak further havoc on trust, truth, and reality.
Think of the church member who sent me the link, who thought it was a sermon from a beloved source. Instead, it was AI slop.
But somehow it was still good enough to pass the sniff test for hundreds of thousands of viewers (or maybe bots?).
This church member is by no means alone; in a few weeks, the video had over half a million views.
WARNING ABOUT FAKES FROM BILLY GRAHAM EVANGELISTIC ASSOCIATION
Last year, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association warned its supporters about deepfakes of Graham, who passed away in 2018.
It urged the public to only trust sermons from its official channels.
This is just a small portent of things to come.
What happens as deepfakes increasingly flood our information ecosystem?
What happens to our sense of truth and how we know it?
What happens to our sense of reality and how we experience it?
STABLE SOURCES OF MEANING ARE BEGINNING TO VAPORISE
At the beginning of the 21st century, Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman coined the term “liquid modernity” to describe the modern condition, where stable sources of meaning and traditional human categories are melted down at the twin altars of the autonomous self and technological progress.
What now, twenty-five years hence?
Social deconstruction and technological development continue apace.
So much so that liquid modernity is turning to vapor, being aerosolised by the digital revolution’s fragmenting forces.
We all feel it. We might even say that, in some way, deepfakes take the dynamics of the digital ecosystem to their logical conclusion.
AI deepfakes are part of what is vaporising our sense of what is real and true.
LET’S LOOK AT THE POSITIVE SIDE
But could this moment also be a catalyst for the resurgence of in-person relationships and gatherings?
Reality gets its revenge eventually, doesn’t it? The church can stand in precisely this moment, as she embodies a different way of being.
It is true that the church could fail miserably if ministers capitulate to AI sermons and outsource pastoral care to bots; if congregants view pastors more as social media influencers than soul-doctors; if the church is seen as just another content provider.
But on the other hand, the church could make a surprising resurgence if the incarnate Christ is the pattern and paradigm for all the church does.
The church can be the place not of deepfake Jesus, but of real Jesus.
CHURCH, DOCTRINE AND CHRIST DON’T VAPORISE
If there is any institution, belief system — or better yet, Person — that can withstand the vaporising forces of digital modernity, it is the church, Christian doctrine, and Christ himself.
For 2,000 years the church has been gathering in person as an embodied communion to hear Christ speak in his living Word, to receive Christ in his living body, and to share in living together with other members of Christ’s body to whom we are united.
The church brings you to an encounter with the person of Christ — not a simulacrum, not a screen, not a string of ones and zeros.
Not a deepfake; just what is most deeply real, living, and true: Union with the living God, with whom we can know and be known, love and be loved.
The God who became one of us, and to whom we are mysteriously and truly united by grace through faith on account of His perfect work.
We personally and intimately experience this in the life of the church in its ministry of water and word, bread and wine.
Here we are brought into the Divine Life, where humanity is fully alive, fully aligned with truth, and fully real.
And we don’t need a Billy Graham deepfake for that.
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