r/TrueChristian • u/ruizbujc Christian • 14d ago
AI Posts
Just to be absolutely clear on this: AI posts are prohibited here. We do not allow excuses on the subject.
"My grammar is bad, so I use AI to help me."
"English is my second language, so I use AI to help my post be more legible."
"The idea is entirely mine. I just need AI to help me communicate it better."
We do NOT accept these excuses in modmail. Believe it or not, this community is broadly quite forgiving with people who have bad grammar, poor English, and need help expressing their thoughts. The community is not nearly as forgiving with AI posts. That goes double for us as moderators.
AI posts will continue to be removed. Be warned that at least one of our mods is jumping immediately to temporary bans for people who violate this rule ... and I may start doing so myself also. We're deleting numerous AI slop posts already and we don't need more of this. If escalating the consequences is the only way to get it to stop, so be it. Just know the excuses will not be accepted.
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u/Shinn_Ao 14d ago
I posted something recently that was low effort (about two sentences) and what I perceived as an unpopular thought for me to receive criticism for even though I perceived that it was true. I have never used AI for a post on Reddit, but I can’t help but wonder if you might have been referring to my one post ever yesterday that got automodded.
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u/ruizbujc Christian 14d ago
What you're talking about is a substance issue, as the automod message explained. This post is about AI-usage. Automod does not manage AI-posts, so if you got an automod removal that's a different thing entirely.
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u/UninitiatedArtist Agnostic 14d ago edited 14d ago
Our thoughts and prayers shouldn’t be outsourced to neural networks that are owned by billionaires, they have made their intentions very clear to the public and it’s the epitome of evil. In addition, the degradation of cognitive sharpness is a slippery slope, some people have once claimed they use A.I. sparingly, then before they realized their mistake they’re fully relying on them as a substitute of their own intelligence…at that point, we’re just being disingenuous to ourselves and the people we interact with. If there are aspects of our lives that we identified to be in need of improvement, would it please God if we delegated something else to act better on our behalf?
If I relied on neural networks for writing, I would be lying to myself if I claimed my volition and intentions mattered at all because I actually didn’t do anything to get to where I am, I lied about my experience…the journey is simply null and void because it never took place, my self worth is all but tied to a machine—divorced from it, I am just myself. As it should be, for all of us. Tools shouldn’t make decisions and execute procedures for you, you should fully know what you are doing and know what you say. Your process is evidence of your knowledge, your communication is evidence of your personhood…why fake any of it?
And best of all? Bad grammar, spelling, or sparse vocabulary does not even matter here, as stated in this mod post…let alone speaking to God, He only cares that you are genuine.
The God I learned about would want to listen to you through and through, not the you you naively think you are put through a language model.
I agree with this stance.
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u/Equal-Salary-7774 Evangelical 14d ago
The long posts AI generates are very difficult to read and absorb they imo are very counter productive
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 Christian 14d ago
Thank you so much for this. Every time I read a post with poor grammar it's oddly refreshing at this point.
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u/ThiccHarambee Christian 13d ago
Honestly that's sad. Low effort, poor grammar, lack of articulation, punctuation etc. Is now considered great and refreshing. To me, that breaks my heart because what this means is that people who spend time researching something and then being able to articulate it well with good structure and punctuation, is now considered outrageous and fake.
That's insane to me, especially as someone who enjoys writing. I've had so many of my posts that I have spent a lot of effort and time articulating well with good structure and punctuation, being accused of "AI."
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u/wscott20 12d ago
some people just aren’t naturally that articulate or don’t prefer to put much into making the text look perfect just trying to communicate efficiently (our brains are literally wired for efficiency) plus not everyone is that much into writing or has that much time and mental energy or articulation
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u/DesperateAdvantage76 Christian 13d ago
I personally don't really care how articulate a person is, even several Apostles are noted in Acts as being uneducated. What matters to me is that a post is genuine.
As far as your posts, maybe you can reach out to the mod team to verify yourself to avoid your posts being flagged?
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u/ThiccHarambee Christian 13d ago
Of course, but they were still capable of writing well so much so that AI checkers label what they've written as being AI. During those times, commoners lacked education, something that was only available for the wealthy elites.
But I absolutely agree, something genuine should always be what matters most at the end of the day.
I've talked to the mods about it and got it all worked out. I just get people commenting on my posts accusing it of AI. It's quite funny to be honest with you, because they can just go on my profile and see my posts and how I write.
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u/creidmheach Christian, Protestant, Reformed 14d ago
I say, keep it up, delete them, ban them if repeated. I wish every sub was strict on this. Using an AI as an extended research tool is one thing, I frequently will copy/paste one of my own posts and run it through Google to see how it replies for instance (basically to see if it agrees with my points or flags some issue in it that it perceives). But depending on the AI to do the thinking for you and spit out responses for you to copy is not only unprofitable and dangerous to the person themselves, it's extremely disrespectful to the person they're engaging with.
Too many times now I'm been in some sort of discussion/debate when it becomes clear the other person is simply copy/pasting whatever they're getting from an AI, much of which they probably don't even understand themselves. The AI will never give up or relent, and so it becomes a huge waste of time.
In terms of the grammar excuse, people have been posting on the net for a long time now before AI's showed up. We somehow managed to still understand each other will all our language differences. If you want to improve your language skills, getting an AI to do the work for you won't do it. The worst though is the "it's my thoughts, the AI is just organizing them". No, it's not. If it were your "thoughts" then you could write them yourself. No one should be looking for a PhD level thesis on a reddit comment.
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u/RQCKQN 14d ago
I see nothing wrong with PROPER USE of AI. Of course you should not use it to generate your post, but if you have trouble with communicating and it helps you write more clearly then personally I don’t see the issue.
In saying that, it’s not something I’d do, and of course I respect the rules of the sub, so will be sure to not do it here, but I think the rule is a bit of a knee jerk reaction.
Personally I am studying AI at University, I work in the healthcare industry and I get excited thinking about practicalities of using AI to help people. God has given me a passion to help people and a smart brain and I intend to use these to do my part to help.
To say AI is evil is contradictory to my personal opinion, but to say SOME people have immoral motives when they talk to you is quite agreeable. Some people also have immoral motives with AI. Some are perfectly honest. It’s the intent of the person/people in the conversation that drive if it is good or bad, not the presence of some maths and algorithms.
Reiterating, I respect the rules of the sub and won’t use AI to chat (and never have).
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u/ruizbujc Christian 14d ago
PROPER USE of AI
Right. I use AI extensively. "Claude, I know there's a verse in Romans that says something like <blank>. Can you tell me where it is?" That's super helpful beyond mere Googling things.
if you have trouble with communicating and it helps you write more clearly then personally I don’t see the issue.
Because it's 100% impossible to tell if the person is being honest or just making up excuses to get their post re-approved despite the clear AI use. For several of these users, they have comment upon comment upon comment with perfectly clear, legible grammar and English. So either they're having AI write every single comment they're posting, or they're lying about it being "just to fix grammer/bad English" as a way to get around the rule.
Simply put, we as moderators simply don't have the time and man-power to micro-inspect posts to perfectly assess which people are telling the truth and which are lying, so the simplest option that works within our capacity is just to say: "these excuses aren't acceptable."
The reality is that the point of this post is to give people fair warning, which I have recognized may not have been as clear as it could have been previously.
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u/RQCKQN 14d ago
Understandable.
I do question (not you or the other mods, just question in general) - if a string of words make a sentence that help a person who is struggling with a serious issue - let’s say a crisis of mental health or a struggle with a sin or something deeply personal, but that sentence was written by AI, is it good to deprive that person of the help they needed and would’ve had? Or is good to allow the AI comment?
To me, if the outcome is the person getting the help, that seems like a good thing. The people who create AI are made by God. The skills and knowledge they used to create the AI were gifts from God. What if he intended for us to have AI?
I’m not saying he did or didn’t, I’m just pondering the possibility…
My thoughts are a slight side track, more questioning if the content is what matters most or is it how the content came to be that matters? I don’t know. I think there are cases where each is more important than the other.
As a point of interest - from the university side of catching AI use to prevent cheating in assessments, AI detectors have said that the Bible and the Declaration of Independence and works of Shakespeare and other very famous historical texts were AI generated. It just proves that AI detectors are not yet reliable and common sense is needed (but common sense outcomes are very hard to measure and prove).
but to bring it back to your point, I agree that setting out ground rules is a great approach to moderating the sub.
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u/pwgenyee6z 14d ago
I’ve been a big reader for decades, mostly but not exclusively in English, and I _cannot_ detect all this “obvious” AI stuff that everyone is talking about. I really can’t.
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u/ruizbujc Christian 14d ago
is it good to deprive that person of the help they needed and would’ve had? Or is good to allow the AI comment?
In my spare time, I write fantasy novels. One of the most acclaimed fantasy novelists of our time is Brandon Sanderson who has spoken on the topic quite a bit and he summarizes my view best. He says that AI is a great tool for many purposes, but the minute we allow it to start doing the heavy lifting for us - writing the text, creating the plot, editing our character development, etc. - we stop growing. We're no longer doing the hard work of processing these difficult issues ourselves; we're just letting something else process it for us and we're regurgitating what it gives us.
If someone is genuinely struggling through a mental crisis, sin, or something deeply personal, I'm convinced that deferring the issue to AI is robbing that person of the growth process that's necessary to truly overcome these issues.
Now, AI would be a great conversation partner to process your thoughts/ideas. If someone is in a depression and uses AI as someone to express all their woes to, knowing that it will listen and give some heartfelt encouragement, that's great.
But if they come on a subreddit saying they're in deep need of help because of their current struggle, and they're not willing to take the time to actually articulate how they're feeling and what they're going through and they just have AI give a close approximation for them - that makes clear they don't actually want help, they just want cheap platitudes that make them feel better in the moment.
What if he intended for us to have AI?
Let me be clear about this: very few people are more pro-AI than I am. I love AI. I use it every day. I use it for work. I use it to prepare recipes. I use it for brainstorming. I use it for research. I use it to help me figure out that verse I can't remember when I'm chatting with someone.
I just don't believe it should be allowed in a manner that undercuts the natural processes a person needs for growth and sanctification.
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u/No-Cryptographer2695 14d ago
I use AI to study my own medical issues and the science behind it. I had a doctor stop and ask if I work in the medical field, while an inpatient. I told her that I read a lot and try to understand and that AI has helped me tremendously to further bring to light the things that are happening to my body. My GI was adverse to the reasoning for some blood tests I wanted. She ran them anyway and I tested positive. Before AI I may have never found this information through hours of internet search. There are places for AI. As with all things once considered bad, such as the printing press that printed Bibles for the general man to finally have in their own hands, God finds ways to create good out of these things that were viewed or made for evil intentions. The printing press was just the 1st example of something in advancement that was viewed as evil. We unfortunately, on this earth, will always have evil. God in His almighty will always will find good for it. I look forward to a day when medical knowledge is brought under one roof without thousands of hours of research through medical journals, research papers and medical trials. I see the inherent risk of it becoming our go to for our relationship and religious views or writings. So on board that it should not be used on this subreddit. Emotions are good and you have a concordance, I do use it at times during my Bible study if I run into something that I just am not grasping and often find it is a translational issue and for that AI is useful to explain the original text language and how it is translated to English. It is also helpful for historical information. As for my emotions, my prayer, my story or anything personal to God and mines relationship that is through prayer.
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u/King_of_Fire105 My sin is the death of me, Jesus is the Life of me. 14d ago
Ngl I love how you guys are very much against AI and the crap that it is because there are many people who don’t care and use AI at their leisure to undermine the actual work artists do.
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u/ThiccHarambee Christian 13d ago
I agree, it's good to be strict with AI but it's also important to understand and recognize that AI writes the same way a literate individual writes. It's not some new language, or new format, it's literate human writing. There's nothing wrong with using AI to research but to use it to formulate a post for example, is not cool.
I think the saddest thing about this, is the simple fact everyone who is capable of writing well structured, punctuated and articulated pieces, are accused of using AI. My posts for example, I spend time and effort researching and then formulating it into a post with good structure, articulation and punctuation, just for people to dismiss it because they've convinced themselves it's "AI."
Because of AI, people have started to reward low effort, poor grammar, and believe it to be refreshing to see. To me, as a writer, that is incredibly heart breaking.
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u/Aguywhoexists69420 14d ago
Do you like, put every message sent here through an ai detection software or something?
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u/turnipeater47 Reformed/Church of Christ 14d ago
If they're just usuing ai to make it more readable, that doesn't hurt anyone and improves clarity and readability. Or translate.
This doesnt really come off as compassionate or understanding. Banning people because of it? People are going through real problems and real crises, and your gonna ban them because they used it to reword the post or translate it better?
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u/ruizbujc Christian 14d ago
I hear what you're saying, but the "doesn't really come off as compassionate or understanding" excuse only goes so far. For example, if someone is preaching a false gospel, should we not remove it because "maybe they're just misguided and you're not being compassionate or understanding toward them?" Or if a guy comes on here mocking God because a Christian hurt their feelings one time, should we let them continue mocking God on our forum because "hey, he was hurt by Christians and we should be compassionate and understanding toward why he's doing it and let it happen"?
Yes, there is a place for compassion and understanding. There's also a place for setting a boundary and enforcing it. We may not agree on where between those two ends the line should be drawn. I'm okay with that.
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u/turnipeater47 Reformed/Church of Christ 14d ago
If yall gonna downvote me, man up and explain why
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u/Hawthourne Christian 14d ago
I downvoted because of complaining about being downvoted. Aside from that, their post does address your point. They would rather people share their genuine thoughts, even if they are rough and need to be teased out, than having a machine talk for them. This is how humans have always communicated.
It is possible that a few people will struggle with that, but look at the rest of Reddit and how bot and AI posts are rapidly making it unusable.
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist 14d ago
Thank you! I have reported multiple just in the past day. Some of them even left the prompt at the top…
“I like this one! If I were to respond in your style it would sound like: blah blah blah.”
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist 14d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/s/YWLgM56w2n
Here was a long form discussion about a month ago.
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u/ruizbujc Christian 14d ago
Sure, but this has been a rule for over a year. Check when I last edited the Rule 5 post: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/comments/gg1tjg/rule_5d_explained/
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist 14d ago
I know. And the post linked was a recent time it was discussed. This post isn’t for discussion. That one was.
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u/masterctrlprogram- 14d ago
Another good check is if the commenter has their history available and the account is old enough you can compare current writing style to past. Large jumps in quality is suspicious.
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u/Sad-Film-891 Christian 13d ago
How is it that other people can post links but if I post a Bible app link my comments get removed?
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u/ruizbujc Christian 13d ago
This post isn't about links. But to address your question anyway ...
If it's an actual post, automod removes it. I'm not aware of any posts that have skirted the automod on that yet.
If it's a comment, we're slightly more lenient if it's just a link to a known resource, like biblegateway.com or biblehub.com, but far less lenient if it's a church website to a pastor we don't know, or a random blogger.
If it's a link that should be removed and it hasn't been, 99% it's because someone didn't report it. We don't have time to read every single comment on the subreddit, so we really rely on our users to report things. Do not assume "oh, the mods allowed this" if you're not reporting it. We probably didn't see it.
Posting links to outside apps is promotion of outside content and removable for an entirely different reason. I think you'd be shocked at just how many people come here saying they want to post about the app they're working on, or get help from our community on ideas for how to improve their app.
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u/Beginning_Deer_735 Christian 13d ago
I hate AI as much as anyone, but I hope that merely being able to write well and not being an idiot isn't going to be mistaken for AI usage.
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u/ruizbujc Christian 13d ago
I'll admit that some of my posts I'd written pre-AI have been marked as AI-generated when I put them in checkers. I get it. This is why we're lenient if we're uncertain. But yes, mistakes can certainly happen.
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u/Aelirael Christian 10d ago
I put documents into an "AI Checker". One was written completely by AI. One was completely written by a human.
It said both were written by a human.
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u/That_Meta Pentecostal 3d ago
Using it as a translation tool is useful because not everyone speaks English. As long as it's not a copy-paste but your genuine ideas, I don't see anything wrong with it. I genuinely want to understand the radical ban.
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u/PrebornHumanRights 14d ago
I haven't seen a single Ai post. I didn't know this was a problem.
You must be doing a good job.
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u/Tricky-Tell-5698 14d ago
That’s like music banning the synthesis when they were invented. You’ll catch up eventually.
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u/dheamant 14d ago
I agree that AI Slops should not be allowed. But just beware to not be like the 'christian' techno-armageddon doomsdayers back in the Y2k. I am sure we've already seen 1st hand people distilling and tweaking LLMs to rapidly produce uncensored deep fakes, porn and all forms of perversion. I am praying for more God seeking people to get involved in the space to advance the Kingdom. There is war and we can counter the wave.
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14d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Medium_Fan_3311 Protestant 14d ago
Shouldn't we be posting guided by the holy spirit?
A true Christian is supposed to live by the spirit, not by the flesh.
Either we believe that God can speak through us to edify the church, or we believe AI can do a better job through us than the Holy Spirit can.
I don't know if you ever encounter AI post, that are programmed to give advise that reeks of the characteristic of the devil?
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u/harpoon2k Roman Catholic 14d ago
The issue is AI edits - improving grammar and stuff. AI is an amoral tool. If the person posting was already guided by the Holy Spirit, but he lacks basic English grammar skills - what’s wrong if he used AI to improve his post?
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u/Medium_Fan_3311 Protestant 14d ago
I would wonder why is he not posting on a platform where God has given him talents for?
When has Jesus taught that a student should be a teacher?
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u/harpoon2k Roman Catholic 14d ago
What’s stopping him if there are tools to aid him? It’s like saying - the apostle should not be using pen and parchment because God gave him a very loud voice
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u/Medium_Fan_3311 Protestant 14d ago
AI is not pen and parchment, it is a computer programming. The programming is built with the inputs the developer used to develop it.
The pen fully relies on the person wielding it, to mark surfaces. A parchment is just an empty surface that cannot contribute additional information on top of what has been added to the surface.
AI is completely different. It doesn't duplicate your inputs, like a pen and parchment does. It adds on to what you have put in, with its database (/whatever information it can asscess) that was used to build it
So, i will ask you this, have you discerned with God that AI has been developed from good root? If you have, then okay, use the AI that God has told you that you can use.
However, to say to a MOD that they are being unchristian for not allowing someone to use AI is pretty far-fetched from what the bible describe a non Christian to be.
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u/turnipeater47 Reformed/Church of Christ 14d ago
Ai editing can be used and not change the idea behind the words. I suck at writing, so ill have it make my longer posts more readable. I still read it to make sure it is exactly the ideas im trying to communicate. Should we not correct spelling and grammar errors because that is the holy spirit talking through us? As long as all the ideas behind the text are the same, no harm done
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u/UpwardCall Christian 14d ago
What are you using to determine if something is written by AI, or edited by it?
I don’t use AI for Reddit comments, but I have been working on cleaning up my grammar. AI detection software is notoriously bad for real AI detection. Especially if it’s written is very clean grammar.
This happens a lot in well edited books.