Note: Within SIL, I am working on a similar statement on how we, as an organization, will work with AI and the arts. The following are my own thoughts.
Introduction
The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) represents a massive shift in the world of creative expression and the arts. For me, this technological shift offers opportunities to accelerate progress in some areas, but also new ethical and missiological risks.
In my ministry, I want to use AI in ways that honor people and their communities, not in ways that exclude or hinder flourishing and creativity. I work for SIL, and we are committed to increasing our AI expertise, specifically in non-exploitative approaches, with an emphasis on ethics. Yet this exists in tension with our other priorities, especially our desire to be locally rooted.
The Lausanne Movement published an extensive reflection on Christian Faith and Technology that considers the implications of AI and other technologies from various perspectives. Some might consider AI as a tool, and therefore neutral—its value depends on its use. In the Lausanne document, they address this perspective and note that:
A better way to consider an improved relationship between technology and humans is to recognize that our technologies are value-laden. That is, they exist and are used because of certain values and ways of seeing the world present in the human community that created the technology. These values shape what technologies to develop, the kinds of knowledge and processes used to make them, and the moral framework not just of their end use, but also how they shape and are shaped by the communities they are embedded in.
In this way of thinking, the relationship between AI and the arts is complex. AI is not neutral; it also reflects the values and “ways of seeing the world” of its creators and the materials on which it was trained.1 The use of AI is not simply a matter of the products it can create, but also of how its use (and the interaction with its products) shapes the community. A foundational guiding statement for me is a quote from a doxology at the end of the Lausanne paper: “Lord, let us always use our technological skills in the loving service of you, and through that service seek the well-being of our neighbors.” Within this concept, how can I use or condone AI in ethnoarts? This document and the following principles outline my thinking on the use of AI in artistic creation within the context of cross-cultural ministry.
Seven Principles for AI and Ethnoarts
1. Intelligent Delegation
We should use AI to empower humans, not render them unnecessary. Ethnoarts values human authorship. Artistic expressions can be complex congeries of words, emotions, histories, narratives, situations, feelings, ideas, and more. While AI might be able to translate text accurately and usefully in some cases, I believe it cannot generate an artistic expression that carries the accumulated ideas, grief, joy, and history of a specific people group without engaging in a form of mimicry that rings hollow.2
We must practice intelligent delegation.3 VerifiedHuman™ describes the important distinction of works being “essentially human-authored,” and I strive for the minimum level of VH3 in their Human–AI Collaborative Spectrum. This might mean allowing AI for certain technical tasks while reserving other, more creative tasks for humans. All work involving AI should also be thoroughly checked and tested by humans.
2. Keeping People First
People should come first in any application of AI in the arts. My theological foundation is found in Philippians 2:3-8, in the incarnational model of Jesus. Brian Schrag outlines this within the framework of “Be With—Learn From—Work Toward.”4 Any application of AI should be founded in this relational dynamic. The arts are embodied: they are products of community life. AI is a disembodied product, likely introduced from outside the community, and it lacks connection to place and personhood. Important questions to ask are: Who owns an AI-generated artistic product? Who feels proud of it?
A healthy community values people. If local artists are replaced—or feel replaced—the community suffers. This is a consideration not only for AI but also for electronic musical instruments, such as programmable electronic keyboards, arranger workstations, looping pedals, and other technologies that can replace multiple musicians. I desire to ensure technology amplifies the voices of artists rather than silencing them.
3. Prioritizing Transformational Process over Product
The process of artistic creation is important, not just the final product. Transformation occurs within a community and among its artists as they wrestle with and through the process of artistic creation. The process is not merely a means to an end (a product), but a site for discipleship, identity formation, and transformation. Working with Scripture to express it artistically can be deeply transformative for the artist and, in turn, for those who encounter the resulting artwork. The one experiencing the artwork is not simply consuming content, but empathizing with and participating in the creator’s spiritual engagement. I will continue to make art and encourage others to do the same, even though I could generate products with AI, because I believe art shapes people and culture throughout the process of creating it and interacting with it.
The value of an artistic expression is linked to the human agency required to produce it. AI-generated artistic expressions risk becoming objects for consumption, bypassing important opportunities for creativity. Automating the creative process with AI overlooks many important elements, such as the transformational dynamics of the creative process, community ownership of the product, and community participation in and affirmation of artistic expressions.
I measure the impact of the arts on people and communities, not the volume of production.5 AI-generated content might be more affordable or efficient to produce, and the ethics of efficiency and availability versus quality and process are complex. Even as AI can generate new ideas and speed up processes, it can diminish our human ability to imagine and practice intuition. While efficiency or speed may at times be valued by some above human creativity, I believe that when a process is automated, transformation ceases.6
4. Focusing on Local First
At present, AI music generation suffers from data bias, and I do not envision this improving significantly for minority communities. AI models are predominantly trained on dominant, readily available Western artistic expressions and struggle to accurately replicate unique local artistic systems. In music, this can mean that microtonal harmonies, vocal timbres, instrument sounds, song forms, complex rhythms, tempo variations, and more are lost or Westernized within a concerning neocolonial dynamic. This reinforces the need for community-centric methodologies, such as Creating Local Arts Together, and other processes that I use.
My ministry is tied to the flourishing of communities. If I deploy tools that extract data and return synthetic pseudo-culture, I compromise my identity as a trusted partner and advocate. If I use AI to attempt to recreate local artistic styles, particularly within minority communities, the output is usually little more than a dim reflection at best. It is often fundamentally tuned to Western ears and eyes.
When a community hears AI music, or an AI musical instrument, they hear, for example, the sound of “a bass,” but not “our kasteh” (a 2-stringed bass instrument from Halmahera, Indonesia). The link to ownership and place is broken, and the local is stripped away as the embodiment of musical creation is removed.
5. Honoring Community Rights
In many cases, training of commercial AI models occurs without the informed consent of communities and artists. This is an ongoing debate in the Western world, but it equally applies to any AI model that claims the ability to create local or “ethnic” artistic expressions. I want to position myself as an advocate for and steward of local communities’ data rights.
In the case of AI-generated artistic products, ownership is complex. Does the community own their AI creations, does the company that created the AI own them, or can anyone take and reuse them, possibly for commercial purposes? I will never use AI products to generate artistic expressions without these conversations with communities.
6. Maintaining Transparency
All AI products must be clearly labeled. Communities, artists, and anyone who interacts with artistic expressions I am involved with should clearly know whether products are human- or AI-generated. I encourage pride in being creative, and applaud initiatives such as VerifiedHuman™, which provides a helpful spectrum for understanding how AI is used in creative ventures and ways for creators to proudly display that their work is essentially human-generated.
This raises important questions: If we are unwilling to claim ownership of or take pride in AI-generated artistic expressions, should we make them, or encourage their creation? How do communities and end-users feel and respond when they become aware that an artistic expression is either fully or partially AI-generated? How does this impact engagement?
7. Learning with Humility
I recognize that technology and AI are rapidly evolving. It is likely that AI models will continue to improve and localize, and may be able to create more appropriately in the future. Many other organizations or people may be utilizing AI for creative endeavors in ways I may find concerning. In partnership, I may find myself in difficult situations as I consider how and whether to collaborate on ventures involving AI and the arts. Beyond the clear ethical issues, my general approach is to preserve space for careful discernment, attentive listening, and learning together. I should never fear to ask, “What if I am wrong?” I will gently work alongside others with different views to improve and educate about the use of AI in the arts, recognizing that their work may not yet fully align with my ideals. Rather than ignore or refuse to collaborate, I choose to encourage them toward what is better.
Conclusion
In light of these principles, I affirm the importance of working with communities to discern together how and whether AI should be used in their artistic and spiritual expression. I seek for AI to remain a servant of human creativity, community participation, and local ownership rather than a substitute for them. My calling is not to produce artistic products, but to walk alongside communities as they encounter God’s Word and express it through their own unique artistic voices. While AI may assist and sometimes support human creativity, it must never displace the relational, incarnational, and transformational dynamics at the heart of my work. As technology evolves, I will continue to engage with AI and encourage others to do the same with discernment and faithfulness, always seeking to ensure that people, languages, and communities flourish as active creators in God’s redemptive work.
Resources
Cheng, Adam, Aaron Calhoun, and Gabriel Reedy. 2025. “Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Academic Writing: Recommendations for Ethical Use.” Advances in Simulation 10 (1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41077-025-00350-6.
“Christian Faith and Technology.” n.d. Lausanne Movement. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://lausanne.org/occasional-paper/christian-faith-and-technology.
COPE. 2023. “Authorship and AI Tools.” Accessed February 13, 2026. https://publicationethics.org/guidance/cope-position/authorship-and-ai-tools.
Crouch, Andy. 2022. The Life We’re Looking For. First Edition. Convergent Books, an imprint of Random House.
“Ethics of Artificial Intelligence – AI | UNESCO.” 2026. Accessed January 27, 2026. https://www.unesco.org/en/artificial-intelligence/recommendation-ethics.
“Ethics Statement | SIL AI & NLP.” 2026. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://ai.sil.org/ethics.
Kaufman, Gil. 2026. “SZA Feels Like She’s ‘At War Because of AI,’ Slams ‘Weird, Stereotypical Struggle Music’ Being Generated By Artificial Intelligence.” Billboard, March 6. https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/sza-at-war-ai-weird-struggle-music-artificial-intelligence-1236194236/.
Knöchel, Tim-Dorian, Konrad J. Schweizer, Oguz A. Acar, et al. 2025. “Core Principles of Responsible Generative AI Usage in Research.” AI and Ethics 5 (6): 6371–77. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-025-00768-8.
Leo XIV. Magnifica Humanitas [Magnificent Humanity]. Encyclical letter, May 15, 2026. The Holy See. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html.
“Protocols for Using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts | Creative Australia.” 2025. Accessed February 18, 2026. https://creative.gov.au/first-nations-arts/protocols-for-using-first-nations-cultural-and-intellectual-property-in-the-arts.
Schrag, Brian. 2025. Creating Local Arts Together (Revised and Updated). William Carey Publishing.
TJC. 2023. “The New Frontier: Artificial Intelligence, Copyright and Indigenous Culture.” Terri-Janke. Accessed November 30, 2025. https://www.terrijanke.com.au/post/the-new-frontier-artificial-intelligence-copyright-and-indigenous-culture.
Tomašev, Nenad, Matija Franklin, and Simon Osindero. 2026. “Intelligent AI Delegation.” arXiv:2602.11865. Preprint, arXiv, February 12. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.11865.
VerifiedHuman. 2026. “VerifiedHuman | Human-Made Content Certification.” Accessed March 10, 2026. https://www.iamverifiedhuman.com.
- See also Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV. In Paragraph 92 he writes that “technology is not simply a tool. When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.” ↩︎
- In an interview with Billboard, the singer SZA describes the issue of AI creating “weird, stereotypical struggle music” that she finds offensive. This is one example of AI attempting to speak for a community in way that the community itself may find unacceptable (in this case African-Americans). AI has not experienced their “struggle,” so is it able to speak on their behalf?
↩︎ - A good rule of thumb for intelligent delegation is to be able to describe what you’ve delegated to AI and who is accountable for it in one sentence. ↩︎
- Schrag, Brian. 2025. Creating Local Arts Together (Revised and Updated). William Carey Publishing. Page 26. ↩︎
- In his book The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch notes: “Human beings may well benefit, for example, by having access to unlimited amounts of recorded music from all over the world and from the whole history of recorded music. Sure enough, technology is glad to provide that—at an economic profit to the owners of streaming services, although not in a way that sustains more than a handful of actual working human musicians. But human beings also benefit enormously from making music, which requires deep communal instruction, personal attention, and years of practice and preparation. This, alas, is a kind of benefit technology cannot readily provide—at least not profitably—so technology does not particularly “want” to help. So we end up with the world we have, where more music is consumed than ever and less music is created, especially by ordinary people in economically sustainable ways, than ever” (emphasis added). ↩︎
- In paragraph 140 of Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV notes, “Educating people about the use of AI, then, involves teaching them to decide when and for what purpose it ought not to be used. The speed and ease with which answers or summaries can be obtained risk extinguishing the desire to ask questions, which is a process that bears fruit only over time.” ↩︎