[bibleguided]

You’re right that a priest can’t (and shouldn’t) dump private pastoral context into a prompt. But context doesn’t have to mean identifiable confession details.

I’m building BibleGuided, and one thing we’re adding is a church feature where congregants can opt in to sharing prayer themes, and leaders can see aggregated and anonymized trends over time rather than identities. That’s enough to shape a homily toward what people are actually struggling with, without violating confidentiality.

If anyone has experience with privacy thresholds (minimum group sizes, differential privacy), I’d love pointers.

[superb_dev]

How are you dealing with the Pope saying priests shouldn’t use your product?

[bibleguided]

I agree with the Pope’s point. Priests should not hand pastoral judgment to a model. BibleGuided has church management tools plus optional AI help for drafting and organizing, with the priest making the final call.

For community context, we avoid confessional and private pastoral data. It is opt-in from congregants, then aggregated and anonymized into themes and trends.

We think AI can be a helpful tool across many areas, including faith, and over time many church leaders (of many denominations) will get comfortable using it in bounded, and responsible ways. If a church does not want AI used for homilies, those features can be toggled off and the rest of our tools still work.

[crazygringo]

If they're Protestant, that might be a point in its favor :)

[i80and]

Not the parent, but products like it are strongly Protestant Evangelical-coded, so that could actually be a selling point for the intended audience

[RobotToaster]

To be fair ignoring and occasionally kidnapping the pope is a time honoured Catholic tradition.

[FrustratedMonky]

Exactly.

A priest could use AI for a homily dealing with drug addiction, without specifying "Bob in row 3 is a methhead"