{"id":49863,"date":"2025-05-02T03:00:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T09:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=49863"},"modified":"2025-05-29T05:33:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T11:33:17","slug":"ai-and-church-cinema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2025\/05\/ai-and-church-cinema\/","title":{"rendered":"AI and the Gospel: Cinema, Changing Minds, and Deep Research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Cinema<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Some AI generated, Church-related movies I created with Google&#8217;s new Vemo 2.<\/p>\n<p><em>David W. Patten&#8217;s fun, 2nd-hand, late account of being visited by Cain<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1280px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('video');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-49863-1\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Video_Feedback_Horseback_Rider.mp4?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Video_Feedback_Horseback_Rider.mp4\">https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Video_Feedback_Horseback_Rider.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p><em>Joseph Smith writing D&amp;C 121 in Liberty Jail<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1280px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-49863-2\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Liberty_Jail_Sunlight_and_Revelation.mp4?_=2\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Liberty_Jail_Sunlight_and_Revelation.mp4\">https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Liberty_Jail_Sunlight_and_Revelation.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p><em>Moroni burying the plates<\/em><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 1280px;\" class=\"wp-video\"><video class=\"wp-video-shortcode\" id=\"video-49863-3\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" preload=\"metadata\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"video\/mp4\" src=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Gold_Plates_Video_Request_Fulfilled.mp4?_=3\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Gold_Plates_Video_Request_Fulfilled.mp4\">https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Gold_Plates_Video_Request_Fulfilled.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n<p>While AI has been able to do very short movie clips for some time now, I&#8217;ve waited for a while to do this post until it was somewhat passable. I think we&#8217;re kind of there now, but there&#8217;s still a lot of work to do. The clips are still quite short, and progress is still being made in fine-grained control over camera angles and the such, but we all know where this is going, and eventually filmmaking that previously took millions of dollars and elite-level contacts will be doable by any creative in their basement, so the homegrown Stephen Spielbergs of Mormonism won&#8217;t have to be born in the right place and right time with the right contacts to make his or her masterpiece.<\/p>\n<p>Of course we aren&#8217;t there yet, or even close to there. I couldn&#8217;t quite get the gold plates to render correctly, for example, and Google&#8217;s famously censorious AI put more clothes on Cain than the account described, but for something I made in ten minutes the potential down the road should be obvious.<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Changing Minds<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>A research team out of Zurich had AI bots infiltrate the r\/changemyviews subreddit and try to, well, change people&#8217;s minds, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/technology\/artificial-intelligence\/ai-researchers-ran-a-secret-experiment-on-reddit-users-to-see-if-they-could-change-their-minds-and-the-results-are-creepy\">finding that AI bots were three to six times more effective than humans at changing minds<\/a>, <\/em>revealing another potential AI use, that of Devil&#8217;s Advocate (or to develop your own argument). \u00a0To test out this use case I had Chat-GPT 4o argue both sides on the question of whether an LDS person should vote for a pro-choice candidate. You can <a href=\"https:\/\/chatgpt.com\/share\/681430e3-4cf4-8010-bd04-593028dab664\">see the back-and-forth here<\/a>. It brought up quotes I wasn&#8217;t aware of (and yes, I checked it for hallucinations), and generally brought to bear the best arguments you hear from the different sides in these discussions (obviously I am in a position to know, having had some experience with these back-and-forths).<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Deep Research<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Another big splash in AI land lately was the use of AI to create in-depth advanced reports on a topic. I had it run a summary of the literature on gay LDS mental health, for example, which has a lot of online noise but also a lot of nuance once you get into actual studies, and it did okay but not perfect (although it caught my papers, so it passed that bar I guess).<\/p>\n<p>I had Google&#8217;s latest model (Deep Research with 2.5 Pro, currently on the month-long free trial plan) produce a report on the origin and development of the LDS doctrine of apotheosis, and it took about 15 minutes to create a <a href=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/ApotheosisLDS.docx\">10,000 word essay on the subject<\/a> on the subject which, while occasionally wandering a bit, exhibited nuance and and analytical rigor and (I believe) accurately tied the different strands of scripture, history, and theology together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cinema Some AI generated, Church-related movies I created with Google&#8217;s new Vemo 2. David W. Patten&#8217;s fun, 2nd-hand, late account of being visited by Cain Joseph Smith writing D&amp;C 121 in Liberty Jail Moroni burying the plates While AI has been able to do very short movie clips for some time now, I&#8217;ve waited for a while to do this post until it was somewhat passable. I think we&#8217;re kind of there now, but there&#8217;s still a lot of work to do. The clips are still quite short, and progress is still being made in fine-grained control over camera angles and the such, but we all know where this is going, and eventually filmmaking that previously took millions of dollars and elite-level contacts will be doable by any creative in their basement, so the homegrown Stephen Spielbergs of Mormonism won&#8217;t have to be born in the right place and right time with the right contacts to make his or her masterpiece. Of course we aren&#8217;t there yet, or even close to there. I couldn&#8217;t quite get the gold plates to render correctly, for example, and Google&#8217;s famously censorious AI put more clothes on Cain than the account described, but for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1254,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-science"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49863"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49883,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49863\/revisions\/49883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}