Not all the news about artificial intelligence is bad. Recently, reports have surfaced that some of its technology could significantly improve the speed and accuracy with which the Bible is being translated into the remaining languages that currently don’t have a Bible. According to the Illuminations.Bible collaborative website, some 3,600 of the 7,000 languages spoken today have little or no Scripture. Using artificial intelligence the right way can help change that within 10 years. Its use offers promise that New Testament translations in all the world’s known languages could be completed by 2033.

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I had the privilege of interviewing Greg Pruett, president of Pioneer Bible Translators, who wrote an article for the Christian Standard highlighting the unprecedented collaboration between translation ministries in the development and use of AI. He estimates that due to the use of AI, the translation rate of high-priority languages has sped up to about 300 per year. At that pace, the last of those could begin five years from now. He has seen unity between the major ministries working on Bible translation like never before. Eleven ministries working together on developing technology for Bible translation have produced momentum and synergy not seen before. As recently as 1999, Wycliffe Bible Translators predicted that it would take eight generations or 150 years for all translations to be completed. Thanks to the use of AI tools, the completion of the New Testament in a target language, which used to take 7 to 10 years, can now be done in less than one year.

How does this work? Expanding on the existence of “machine translations” (think your Google Translate app on steroids), data is fed into “smart engine” software that can learn grammar, phrases, and even idioms. The software then produces a draft of the translation in the target language. Believe it or not, smart engine technology can do that in 11 minutes! A team of theologians and native speakers then goes to work with the draft and, over a period of six to nine months, edits and improves it to the point of achieving a final product. The software has even become sophisticated enough to posit hypotheses where more than one meaning of the original text is possible. This feature potentially increases the quality of translation instead of decreasing it, as long as the final outcome is guided by human expertise.

This process is faster because the draft is not being produced by a team of scholars poring over and discussing the text. The machine delivers the draft, and the human experts then work with that. Think about the difference between making a dish from scratch versus buying one ready-made, to which you then add your personal flavor.

In addition, AI can produce different publication forms of Scripture, such as audiobooks and companion Bible-learning materials, in a short amount of time so that they can be presented in a target language as a complete package.

On the downside, the rapid development of AI technology is anything but smooth. Greg describes it as chaotic. For instance, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has gobbled up all the digital data that translation ministries had stored online to use Scripture to develop tools for secular language learning and preservation. That may confuse the process of spreading the Gospel, because Meta’s motives are very different from those of translation ministries.

Another issue is that the technology is still in development. Currently, it relies on being fed massive amounts of data, which limits its use to larger language groups. Smaller, more localized languages, with less data available, lag in translation until smart engines that rely on small amounts of data can be developed.

Quality is, of course, always the primary concern. It is still difficult to overcome a certain amount of “unnaturalness” in some of the translated texts, especially in idioms. For that reason, AI translation must always be subservient to human intelligence. After all, the Holy Spirit is the ultimate language expert, and translation ministries will never stop depending on Him to overcome the unique barriers between the Bible’s original languages and the target language.

I asked Greg if he sees areas that are particularly vulnerable to spiritual attack in the current collaborative process. After all, the Enemy does not want the Bible to be available in every language. He identified these areas:

• Theological unity. Theological preference can come into play when deciding how to translate certain expressions from the original languages into the target language. They can be a source of disagreement, argument, and inaccuracy.
• Putting AI use by translation ministries in a bad light. Reports have accused translators of using AI to line their pockets by constantly asking for donations to help develop the technology with the “false” promise that it will finish Bible translations in all known languages by a particular year.
• Unwise use of secular translation companies that do not understand the spiritual significance and context of what they are translating but rely solely on machine translations. That may dilute the overall quality of available translations by offering purely machine-generated translations alongside AI-assisted ones. The language groups, especially when they are largely unchurched, may not know the difference between the two. Inaccurate translations can lead to false gospels and error-prone spiritual training.
• The production of alternative Bibles (a biggie). We have already seen PETA produce an animal-friendly rewrite of the Creation story. Even worse, at the World Economic Forum, senior adviser Yuval Noah Harari proposed using AI to develop a new Bible that would unify and correct religions. It would be a significant leap toward one world religion, the spiritual component of the WEF’s globalist agenda.
• Dissemination of false information. The internet is both a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because it provides easy and immediate access to a wealth of information. It is a curse because it has also made it easy to put out false information, blurring the lines between genuine and fake. Good teaching, good spiritual knowledge, and sound Bible tools are online neighbors to false teaching, wrong spiritual information, and skewed versions of the Bible.

In general, much of what we hear of AI is cause for great alarm, even on the part of those who have helped develop it. But we believe that God is preeminent over all things, even AI. God often uses for good what was intended for evil (see Genesis 50:20). That was the case in the early days of the Church. Christianity began as a movement on the streets of Jerusalem, in a nation whose main religion was hostile to the Gospel, and located within an empire that was even more hostile still. Yet, the Pax Romana (the Roman dominance of many formerly independent nations) and its system of well-developed trade routes, roads, and waterways, facilitated the rapid spread of the Gospel. Throughout history, the Church has used secular technology (the printing press, radio, TV, and now the internet) to spread the Gospel effectively. Despite the dangers of those technologies, God has always worked through them for His purpose. His preeminence over technology is not (yet) visible by restricting its use to Christian ministry — but it is established by the ministry of His kingdom flowing through it and transforming people’s hearts. And there is nothing the Enemy can do to stop that.

We must bathe the use of AI for Bible translation in prayer so that it stays within the role of assisting human expertise, not overtaking it. Here are some specific points for prayer from the Illuminations.Bible website:

• Pray for those without God’s word in the language they understand best. When we pray for people to receive Scripture in their heart language for the first time, we experience our heavenly Father’s joy (Luke 15:3-7). Ask our Father to speed up and empower the work of Bible translation in areas where languages exist without one verse of Scripture.
• Pray for the global church. Ask that local church leaders and translators be raised up to initiate and pursue the goal of having God’s Word in the language they understand best. For those that are anticipating the completion of translation projects, pray for daily engagement of the Scriptures and transformation of the communities.
• Pray for the deaf. 70 million people in the world use sign language to communicate on a daily basis and yet 95% of the 400 unique sign languages have no Bible translation. Ask that through deaf partner ministries, the doors of communication for the Deaf will be opened for those who have been marginalized (Isaiah 29:18).
• Pray for the Bible translation movement. Ask God to use the power of divine unity among the Bible translation organizations to bring Scripture to every people group in the world in the language they understand best. 2 Corinthians 1:21-22.

A complete Prayer Guide for the Illuminations collaborative effort is available here.

Father, we rejoice that You have dominion over everything that inhabits the earth, even the things that can be used for evil. Unite the ministries working together to finish the task of translating the Bible into every known language in the wise use of AI-assisted technology. Protect them from every attempt by the Enemy to sow disunity and confusion. Provide for them and empower them. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Remco Brommet is a pastor, spiritual-growth teacher, and prayer leader with over 40 years of experience in Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa, and the U.S. He was born and raised in the Netherlands and pastored his first church in Amsterdam. He moved to the U.S. in 1986. He and his wife, Jennifer, live north of Atlanta. When not writing books, he blogs at www.deeperlifeblog.com and assists his wife as a content developer and prayer coordinator for True Identity Ministries. Jennifer and Remco are passionate about bringing people into a deeper relationship with Christ. Photo Credit: Canva.