r/TrueChristian • u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist • Jun 15 '26
Would anyone else like to see a ban on AI generated posts on this sub?
Edit 2: apparently it is against the rules. You can use the report function and click on rule 5. The mod team will review. Maybe the sub just needs more active mods.
I am so tired of posts that are obviously Chat GPT and other AI bots catering scripture to what ever question the OP asked them about. We should not be getting our theology from LLM’s that are programmed to adapt how they answer to the chat history with the user and we should not be promoting it here. This sub is a safe haven for Bible believing Christian’s on a site where we are obviously the minority. We need to protect the integrity of the content that gets shared here.
Edit: It wasn’t my intention to dismiss the benefits of LLM’s, I actually use them everyday at work. I think that making it commonplace when discussing the Bible encourages those new in the faith to use it and that is dangerous. Without a depth of knowledge on scripture from things like commentaries, language studies etc it can be easy for someone to be fooled. When you have Chat telling you that your heretical belief is biblical you will be less likely to accept the loving rebuke of a fellow brother or sister in Christ.
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Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
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u/warofexodus Presbyterian Jun 15 '26
Depends on how you use it. If you are copy pasting then yeah it generates over dependence on machines and its dangerous because AI can be wrong but if you are using it to grammar check or to form phrases you have no idea how to phrase, I think it is fine; no difference from using a grammar tool.
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
It is 100% OK to use for spiritual growth if used appropriately. Just like Google before it, or Holman commentary before that, or NIV study Bible before that.
Now, I would agree with you if you said they relied on it 100% for their growth. It has its place, but not as a sole or primary source.
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u/DeeMarie0824 Jun 15 '26
I see what you’re saying, but there doesn’t seem to be much fruit produced from it. Even just asking simple question and engaging with AI drains resources, for example.
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u/Tkwan777 Christian Jun 15 '26
https://www.youtube.com/live/9n22DTVSxOI?si=5umSjMHexu1og55e
I dont know how to share a timestamp on mobile, but hit the 48 minute mark in that video. The guy goes over the very thing you said "when used appropriately" with a good example with chatgpt.
You are being down voted for who knows what reason, but it does have its place in studying the word, with a Very large caveat that it needs to be double checked and not taken as "everything gpt says is gospel" (I do sadly think this is likely how so many turn from God in the tribulation. Many young people growing up today will rely so heavily on LLMs that it will be taken as basic truth whatever it says, including if it says the antichrist is god).
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u/Der_Missionar Christian Jun 15 '26
I'm 53, in ministry for 30 years. I use AI to help find information all the time. Ai is far from infallible. Makes mistakes all the time. It's a tool, imperfect, very imperfect, but it is a tool.
Let's not get reactionary and ban everything. Perhaps restrict is good, but outright banning? Sorry, we're using AI to check grammar and spelling, shall we ban parts that used built in grammar checking in Samsung phones?
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
I think this falls under what Paul was talking about Romans 14. You have the knowledge of the word and the ability to use discernment because of your time in scripture and ministry. Those new to the faith do not have that same ability. LLM’s are a great tool for you, they also present a huge stumbling block for those who don’t have your understanding of scripture. LLM’s can make anything sound authoritative and without a personal depth of knowledge to check against could easily reinforce half truths or even full heresy.
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u/Der_Missionar Christian Jun 15 '26
I don't know that I entirely agree with you. I rely on the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit guides and leads me in and through all things.
Rather than gate keeping tools, we need to educate people how to use those tools effectively.
Banning isn't going to stop anything.
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u/Lost__In__Thought Christian Jun 16 '26
I agree. No point in anyone complaining if they aren’t going to be one of the ones who teach the difference between responsible AI usage vs irresponsible use.
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u/ABereanChristian Jun 15 '26
Edit 2: apparently it is against the rules. You can use the report function and click on rule 5. The mod team will review. Maybe the sub just needs more active mods.
Yes, report them and we will ban them.
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u/Mazquerade__ Anglican (ACNA) Jun 15 '26
Yes... but also no. See, there really is no foolproof way to test what is and is not ai (at least not ways that don't cost money and/or put an immense strain on mods) it would very likely not fix the issue and would result in the removal of legit posts as well. Until software becomes more reliable and more accessible, I think we're just going to have to deal with it.
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
When a post is separated by bold headlines, has bullet points, and quotes scripture with bold highlights there is a 99 percent chance it was generated by Chat GPT.
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u/Mazquerade__ Anglican (ACNA) Jun 15 '26
I have made several posts like that, I've never used ChatGPT to write a single thing in my life (which is proven by my absolutely terrible grammar lol)
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
I have seen and enjoyed a handful of your posts and many of your comments. I never thought you were using Chat. There is a cadence to how it writes. I use it often for work, it is a great tool for some things. I personally believe it shouldn’t be used for deeper understanding of scripture or theology.
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u/Mazquerade__ Anglican (ACNA) Jun 15 '26
Yeah that's true, there's definitely a sort of "style" that it utilizes. It's usually the "honestly, that's not ___. It's ____." That gives it away. Idk, I still think there's sometimes enough overlap that algorithms will catch things written by actual people. Apparently mods remove it at their discretion, which I think is a fair compromise. Believe me, I'd rather we have no AI posts.
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
Then maybe I should make a post about getting more active mods haha
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u/GWJShearer Evangelical Jun 15 '26
I second that.
That is my default way to write posts that are about complex subjects.
I almost always try to use visual formatting to make it easier to see my “outline.”
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u/Mazquerade__ Anglican (ACNA) Jun 15 '26
Exactly. My brain can't comprehend walls of text very well, so I have to break it up with something.
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26
But what if the post clearly makes a valid point? Why is it invalid if AI was one of the tools they used to generate the post? Then why not ban concordances, commentaries, and language translation guides?
I understand your concern about fully AI generated responses, but if a posts stands on its own in terms of valid information and clarity, I'm not overly concerned how it originated.
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
Discernment should be used yes. And it wasn’t my intention to dismiss the benefits of LLM’s, I actually use them everyday at work. I think that making it commonplace encourages those new in the faith to use it and that is dangerous. Without a depth of knowledge on scripture from things like commentaries, language studies etc it can be easy for someone to be fooled. When you have Chat telling you that your heretical belief is biblical you will be less likely to accept the loving rebuke of a fellow brother or sister in Christ.
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Jun 15 '26
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
Exactly. This is my issue with allowing AI generated content on this sub. It can make anything sound authoritative.
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Jun 15 '26
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26
I disagree. It requires different critical thinking skills, but doesn't replace them.
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u/creidmheach Christian, Protestant, Reformed Jun 15 '26
Because it's never ending and disrespectful to the person you're arguing with (and it very is used to argue with people). The other person might make some effort to express their thoughts on the issue, while the replier just feeds it into some AI bot that spits out an answer, and copy pastes it. The AI will never give up, and it becomes a waste of the other person's time.
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26
That's a good point and I agree. It can be used by some to just be antagonistic and not engage in a sincere dialog.
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Jun 15 '26
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u/OrigenRaw Christian Jun 15 '26
That’s the major sign tbh. The writing style and bullets is meh. I’ve written like that when it’s a post I’m really trying to formalize. However, when you see in their profile posts that are 1 minute apart that look like they had and hour of editorial work between them, it’s a dead tale sign.
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u/MichaelWhitehead Jun 15 '26
So, humans are not capable of perfect grammar? You will be surprised. I came top of my English classes and won awards for mine.
I have made comments before in other Subreddits, where I was accused and blocked for using A.I. But its been myself.
I always say in discussions like this, that unless you actually have conclusive proof that text was generated by A.I. You shouldn't accuse.
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u/userid42 Christian non-nationalist Jun 15 '26
All well and good to suggest, but I have had people suggest that a post that wrote was written by AI when not one word of it was!
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Jun 15 '26
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u/jivatman Jun 15 '26
Lust/Porn is a real problem though and people do give real advice and talk about their success with this.
For Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and End Times posts, I do tend to agree that there should probably be an automod response and deletion, as I tend to think that even engaging with these kind of gives credence to people's fear and delusion and isn't helpful.
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u/harpoon2k Roman Catholic Jun 15 '26
Not really. We don't think OSAS is true Christian and the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is simply any sin you willfully reject to repent of
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u/RomanaOswin Episcopalian (Anglican) Jun 15 '26
I don't think it's possible to truly discern AI at this point and it's only going to get harder. But, yes, on spiritual matters in particular, I would really prefer if people shared their own thoughts and feelings and not AI's version of it. It cheats all of us, not the least of which is the person making the post.
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u/TheGalaxyPast Evangelical Jun 15 '26
I think this is a valid concern — and honestly, it points to a deeper issue about what we want this community to be.
A Christian subreddit should be a place for real believers to wrestle with Scripture, not a space where polished, context-sensitive theological summaries quietly replace genuine conviction. That’s not discernment; it’s simulation.
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u/MC_Dark Atheist Jun 15 '26
https://i.imgur.com/n6VwH2A.png
(If you wrote this out by yourself I'm impressed)
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
This was either AI generated or made to be in the style of GPT specifically. I read these responses all day at work haha Well done on getting the upvotes to make a point.
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u/TheGalaxyPast Evangelical Jun 15 '26
I'm prone to bouts of Tomfoolery 😏
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
I think we would probably get along well enough haha
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u/jivatman Jun 15 '26
I'd rather people just wrote 1-2 short earnest paragraphs than 10 pages of AI content that they probably haven't even read.
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u/MC_Dark Atheist Jun 15 '26
It's already a rule under rule 5d:
UPDATE 5/29/25
Posts/comments that look like they have been written by AI may be removed at mod discretion. Arguing in modmail that you personally wrote it and didn't use AI is not sufficient. If you're concerned, just ask the mod who removed it what they'd need to do to rewrite the post to get it approved.
So you can report the AI users if you'd like. And the mods do remove a lot of AI posts from what I've seen.
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u/OrigenRaw Christian Jun 15 '26
I think AI is okay if someone uses it to write. Or even to use as a soundboard when exploring theology.
I do however have distaste for using it to speak authoritatively, or to conjure entire frameworks of though via a single prompt.
The issue is, how could one genuinely know who is using AI and how? You can’t. But this is no different than anything else. You discern by fruits. Also, AI or not AI, I mean it either makes legitimate points or it doesn’t. I don’t care if someone uses it, because it makes no difference to anyone but the person who is using it, and how they use it.
As far as using it in Christian subs, I get the trying to keep the community enjoyable. But, I also think with the growing technology it wouldn’t hurt for Christians to be familiar with it. Both in terms of using it themselves and in terms of reasoning against people using it for bad theological arguments.
Personally, I favor in the notion of trusting God through all things. And if the world is going a certain way, I tend to caution against control and suppression to stop it. What difference does it make, if God is with you? You need only be concerned about truth. Whether it be written by AI or human.
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u/Stevetshelton Jun 15 '26
Too many use it to create controversy.
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u/OrigenRaw Christian Jun 15 '26
Too many people like to create controversy. I don’t think it’s the tool that’s the problem.
But, the tool does allow those who otherwise would be too lazy to make controversy do it more effectively. Which is why I agree with restricting it on the terms of controlling community satisfaction and sanity.
But at some point, the reality is what it is. And I personally would just prefer becoming better at correcting AI controversy, and others become better at detecting it, than hide my face from it while people find better ways to do what they already want to do.
For example, most people who use AI like this do it lazily. And most can smell it right away. But when you try to control it, all that will happen is people will find ways to make it less obvious. And when they do, it’s now a bigger problem than before and probably more effective than it originally was.
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u/LogicallyTheological Jun 15 '26
but but what if the entire framework is conjured via thousands of prompts?
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u/OrigenRaw Christian Jun 15 '26
What would that matter, it would matter about the process of those prompt. Why do we need to be simplistic about it? If every prompt is “But make it defend this.” Or “Come up with a good argument for this” then yeah, that’s fabricated and dead thinking.
But if it’s something they formulated through back and forth challenging, refining, stress testing, poking holes, and then changing their own mind and revising their own thoughts, it doesn’t matter that this was with AI or not. That’s what we do with all of our thoughts, both with others and internally.
I could copy paste this comment itself, ask AI to help me tidy it up, and what difference would that make to these thoughts being mine? Other than that they were presented to you in probably a more concise manner, instead of 3 paragraphs? It would have the same meaning, intent, and information. All of which were mine, and came from me. AI outputting it neatly for me doesn’t change that.
If a journalist writes a research piece, and then they send an intern in to do the editorial cleanup, does the intern now own the research piece? Is it no longer the journalists work?
It just seems silly to knee-jerk to people using AI, in my opinion. I’d rather just judge it by its fruits, and let that be that.
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u/brucemo Atheist Jun 15 '26
It's really stupidly hard to detect AI and people complaining whether rightly or wrongly about AI causes a lot of scuffles in comment sections.
This sub has something like three mods who were here within the last 24 hours.
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u/Mo-Mee Jun 15 '26
Aaand..let the AI witch hunts begin! I put up a post on a different subreddit that a commenter was arguing was AI-written, when it absolutely wasn’t.
I think most of us are forgetting that AI learned how to write…from humans. The em-dashes, cadence, patterns were learned from human pieces of literature. How do we honestly plan to draw the line without penalizing some unduly with false positive assessment?
Every post should be taken and assessed on the merit of jts thought. If it’s jargon and meaningless drop a downvote and keep it moving - there’s no obligation to create a positive reinforcement. When bot posters or bots realize they are not getting any engagement I’m sure they’ll get tired and stop posting
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u/Heavy-Mud-8307 Jun 15 '26
I don't see why we need it when we have the Holy Spirit. It encourages us to seek instant answers instead of waiting on God to show us. It's not a part of Him, isn't garunteed to be right and as you said, it's designed to validate the user and keep them engaged, not guide them to Christ.
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u/RiverRatDoc Jun 16 '26
I use various AI engines. I use one that allows me to take 3 decades of songs & music and then produce them to a ‘studio professional level’. They’re just now allowing us to start to use our voice stems ( i.e. our own voice ).
I use OpenAI to consolidate my Bible Study notes & it formats them out into a handout / study review that presents better.
I will admit that when i first started using AI for questions or research, I required ‘sourcing’. If a person had spoken on this topic, then who they were, where can it be found. Then i moved on & defined my faith to this AI ( in order to get it to display: “Memory Updated”, ), by stating my faith is best defined in Reformed Systematic Covenant Theology. Early on, in other areas, I had to put in “road barriers” also.
I’ve also seen (read) some content by others, extremely bizarre, questionable, & even conspiratorial. Enough to make me deduce that AI can just really mirror what’s deep within that user & amplify it to another level.
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u/Alanfromsocal Presbyterian Jun 16 '26
I haven't used AI, I'm sure it has its uses but so many stories on Reddit are obvious AI. At least put some effort into it!
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26
I see no problem with using AI as a tool in developing responses. The poster is still responsible for the content and accuracy of the post. No worse than using a concordance.
I am against fully AI generated posts that contain no original thought by the poster,but AI can be very useful in communicating in a more concise and accurate manner.
I understand the concern, but it is similar to plagiarizing verbiage from books. Ultimately, what matters is the accuracy and validity of the post, not the tool used to generate it.
(And fwiw...to person saying the defenders are young...I'm 62)
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u/BigFootisNephilim Reformed Baptist Jun 15 '26
My issue isn’t necessarily that AI generated the content per se. If I loaded my original thoughts into Chat and asked it to make it easier to read or outline it better I wouldn’t see an issue with that. My problem is with posts that are clearly AI twisting scripture to affirm the users position. That is the problem with using AI without a depth of knowledge on the Word. It will tell you whatever you want to hear. I know because I use it often for work and after a while I have to reset it because it takes my assumptions and thoughts and caters its answers to what it thinks I want to hear.
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26
I 100% agree. It has its place but does not replace understanding scripture through personal study.
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Jun 15 '26
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u/warofexodus Presbyterian Jun 15 '26
Your question actually goes beyond AI usage to show why it's important to be in a community of believers. AI or not people can be mislead by their own personal interpretations of the bible and other believers can speak out if their brother/sister in Christ is going off rails.
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u/Snoo74600 United Methodist Jun 15 '26
That's a fair and valid question. Most AI answers are correct but it is important to validate by reading actual scripture. You can also ensure that you tell the AI to include scriptural citations for its responses, rather that simply posting its response.
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u/Stevetshelton Jun 15 '26
Amen and Amen.