A Christian tech firm in Colorado has acquired an AI chatbot beforehand branded as Bible Chat. The corporate says it goals to develop the device additional as a custom-made synthetic intelligence assistant tailor-made for church buildings and ministries.
The Religion Assistant chatbot creates customized AI fashions for church buildings, parachurch teams, publishers, seminaries, homeschool organizations, and extra, providing round the clock dialog capabilities, the tech firm mentioned in a press release.
Gloo’s Chief AI Officer, Steele Billings, mentioned, “We’ve admired Religion Assistant’s imaginative and prescient and innovation since their spectacular work in the course of the first Gloo AI Hackathon,” including that Religion Assistant “places ministries in command of their content material — they determine what the mannequin is educated on and the place it’s deployed.”
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Religion Assistant co-founder Chase Cappo said, “Now, with Gloo, we will help extra ministries implement distinctive AI methods to perform their missions,” describing how the chatbot can join customers to workers or volunteers and recommend related sources.
Religion Assistant co-founder Andrew Rogers added, “Our journey has all the time been about utilizing expertise to assist the Church’s mission,” noting that working with Gloo expands that imaginative and prescient whereas honoring the corporate’s core values.
Cappo and Rogers will proceed to contribute to Religion Assistant because it turns into a part of Gloo, with Cappo taking up the function of director of the Gloo AI Enterprise Division.
Organizations utilizing Religion Assistant embrace the Luis Palau Affiliation, Concordia Church, The Christian Put up and KCBI Radio.
Emily Haring Thevarajoo, digital content material director at KCBI Radio, mentioned, “The platform lets us present 24/7 solutions, encouragement and assist, which suggests we will serve our viewers at any time when they want us.”
“It’s helped us assume otherwise about how we interact listeners and even how we method donors,” she added, noting that analytics from the device assist her staff perceive the varieties of questions individuals are asking.
Gloo will launch a free model of Religion Assistant constructed on the Gloo Kingdom-Aligned Giant Language Mannequin (KALLM).
Gloo defined that the free tier permits church leaders to coach an AI assistant on their very own sermons and content material, with superior options offered underneath the Gloo+ membership. Bigger ministries and publishers searching for absolutely customized AI fashions can entry enterprise choices, in keeping with the corporate.
Gloo describes itself because the expertise platform that connects ministry leaders with sources, individuals, insights and funding. The corporate says it serves over 90,000 church buildings and greater than 1,000 useful resource companions.
In August 2024, Gloo secured $110 million in monetary funding, which Gloo Chief Options Officer Brad Hill described as the corporate’s “largest single capital elevate.”
He advised The Christian Put up on the time that the funding got here from “faith-aligned buyers,” which included a number of ministries and church-supporting organizations searching for to advance Gloo’s mission.
Hill credited what he referred to as a “community of supporters over the previous 15 years” who’ve witnessed Gloo’s impression. He added, “We’re seeing that when the religion ecosystem is correctly linked with the best sources, instruments, knowledge and funding, actual progress is feasible.”
Gloo partnered with the Barna Group in 2023 to look at Christian views of AI, discovering that 22% of respondents thought of AI “good for the Christian Church,” whereas 51% disagreed and 27% have been not sure.
“We imagine it’s an ethical crucial to make use of expertise for good, and when used responsibly, the Church has a chance to not solely take part, however lead,” Hill mentioned, including that Gloo holds relationships because the precedence, and that AI “ought to higher assist, not change, relationships.”
