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highplainsdem

(57,470 posts)
Wed Jun 4, 2025, 11:51 AM Jun 4

Why Do Christians Love AI Slop? (404 Media on AI-slop videos about the Bible flooding online platforms) [View all]

https://www.404media.co/why-do-christians-love-ai-slop/

A crowd of people dressed in rags stare up at a tower so tall it reaches into the heavens. Fire rains down from the sky on to a burning city. A giant in armor looms over a young warrior. An ocean splits as throngs of people walk into it. Each shot only lasts a couple of seconds, and in that short time they might look like they were taken from a blockbuster fantasy movie, but look closely and you’ll notice that each carries all the hallmarks of AI-generated slop: the too smooth faces, the impossible physics, subtle deformations, and a generic aesthetic that’s hard to avoid when every pixel is created by remixing billions of images and videos in training data that was scraped from the internet.

“Every story. Every miracle. Every word,” the text flashes dramatically on screen before cutting to silence and the image of Jesus on the cross. With 1.7 million views, this video, titled “What if The Bible had a movie trailer…?” is the most popular on The AI Bible YouTube channel, which has more than 270,000 subscribers, and it perfectly encapsulates what the channel offers. Short, AI-generated videos that look very much like the kind of AI slop we have covered at 404 Media before. Another YouTube channel of AI-generated Bible content, Deep Bible Stories, has 435,000 subscribers, and is the 73rd most popular podcast on the platform according to YouTube’s own ranking. This past week there was also a viral trend of people using Google’s new AI video generator, Veo 3, to create influencer-style social media videos of biblical stories. Jesus-themed content was also some of the earliest and most viral AI-generated media we’ve seen on Facebook, starting with AI-generated images of Jesus appearing on the beach and escalating to increasingly ridiculous images, like shrimp Jesus.

-snip-

Corrina Laughlin, an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University and the author of Redeem All: How Digital Life Is Changing Evangelical Culture, a book about the intersection of American evangelicalism and tech innovation, told me she was not surprised.

“It's not surprising to me to see Christians producing tons of content using AI because the idea is that God gave them this technology—that’s something I heard over and over again [from Christians]—and they have to use it for him and for his glory,” she said.

-snip-


There are other reasons not mentioned that are typical of fundamentalists.

One is gullibility. Fundamentalists are much more likely to overlook flaws in anything with a Christian theme (including the orange thing in the White House, criminal as he is, since he declares himself a champion of Christians).

Another is lack of concern for anyone not sharing their cause - like the artists whose intellectual property was stolen to train the AI.

And a third, for all too many fundamentalists, is complete lack of concern about reality. They'll believe the AI disinformation they generate is the truth. A fundie once told me they thought Frank Peretti's ridiculous Christian horror novel This Present Darkness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Present_Darkness

really WAS the truth. Someone like that won't hesitate to use AI to peddle their delusions.
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Because Thomas Kinkade is no longer available. tanyev Jun 4 #1
I guess AI is the modern version of the Jesus Saves cards left on public toilets by religious zealots. Silent Type Jun 4 #2
I stopped at a truck stop in the Bible Belt years ago and saw a stack of "How to use your mud flaps for Jesus" flyers highplainsdem Jun 4 #6
I'm still laughing as I type. I live in that Bible Belt and don't doubt it. Silent Type Jun 4 #10
AI's capacity for illustrating human fantasy brings religious delusion to life. TheProle Jun 4 #3
Google scarlett johansson beautiful cabin crew Gore1FL Jun 4 #4
Lots of images in the Reddit thread I'm linking to below. Pure garbage. Complete waste of highplainsdem Jun 4 #11
AI lets them all be as maunderingly awful as Jon McNaughton JHB Jun 4 #5
There's been so much AI slop circulating that I almost forgot about McNaughton's dreadful paintings. highplainsdem Jun 4 #9
Yes, they've always had that "slop" sensibility even when painted by a human JHB Jun 4 #20
Because evangelical christians want to see the wrath of God SARose Jun 4 #7
Because they've always had a penchant for hokey garbage. Basso8vb Jun 4 #8
I don't think its limited to religion Renew Deal Jun 4 #12
Oh, I don't think it's only about religion. There are countless AI-generated fake obits about living celebrities on highplainsdem Jun 4 #14
It is interesting Renew Deal Jun 4 #16
Gullible Moran's...I had a friend back in college days (I'm late 60s now) who lived in a small mobile home... wcmagumba Jun 4 #13
My guess would be that they have really, really shitty taste in art . . . hatrack Jun 4 #15
Also music, movies, food, politics, news networks... Initech Jun 4 #18
Like Big Boy, Socialist Realism never really went away . . . hatrack Jun 4 #19
Because they love anything that speaks their language. Initech Jun 4 #17
Because religion is their hobby and drug ibegurpard Jun 4 #21
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