Christian radio ministries may welcome AI as a faster, cheaper production tool, but NRB President and CEO Troy Miller warns the risks grow as the technology starts sounding human, from deepfaked sermons to listeners who trust chatbots over pastors.
Miller discussed AI’s impact on religious media during a recent appearance on the Thinking Christian podcast with Dr. James Spencer. Miller sorted the technology into three buckets: productivity, AI as a “teammate,” and legal and ethical questions.
On the production side, Miller sees clear benefits for stations, many of which are nonprofits under constant pressure to control costs, but has concerns about intellectual property. Miller pointed to the risk of AI tools taking a pastor’s recorded sermons, reworking them from a different theological viewpoint, and distributing them in that pastor’s audio likeness, a direct threat to the radio ministries that have built audiences around trusted voices.
That fight in radio has been simmering for more than a year, with questions about when the boiling point will arrive.
In May, iHeartMedia Chief Creative Officer Rahul Sabnis detailed the company’s “Guaranteed Human” pledge, which promises its on-air hosts will never be replicated through synthetic voice, backed by AudioCon research finding 90% of consumers want their media from a real human. However, a study from Harker Bos Group’s Crowd React Media in July found more than half of radio listeners were unbothered with stations using AI as long as it was properly disclosed.
In the Christian sphere, an NRB study conducted in January found 15% to 20% of respondents said they would likely turn to AI rather than their pastor for a biblical answer, and 5% said they trust AI over their pastor. “That should send shockwaves across this community if that’s kind of the direction we’re going with this,” said Miller.
Spencer argued that radio and print, unlike YouTube, TikTok, and podcasts, are harder for AI systems to absorb and repurpose. Miller agreed, favoring what he called an analog approach built on radio and physical book publishing, alongside in-person community. “Christian communicators are going to, I think, lead the way to help see how some of these tools can keep the gospel in the public space and help humanity remain humanity.”
Stressing balance, Miller noted, “That doesn’t mean that we’re rejecting AI, but it means we’re holding to the foundation and looking at AI what it is. It’s an artificial tool created by man and should be always thought of as such.”
