Digital Pentecost: AI to let Christian broadcasters ‘speak’ in different languages

In the New Testament’s Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit descended like a flame upon the apostles, who began preaching in different languages.

Soon, a digital — not divine — source of verbal inspiration will seek to do the same for today’s evangelical pastors: artificial intelligence.

Megachurch pastors such as the Rev. Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church and the Rev. Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship will appear to preach in Spanish, Chinese or Swahili, thanks to Pray.com.

“We were able to build out speech-to-speech model translations, where we can take a model of Jack’s voice and translate his voice into those different languages to reach people all over the world with the Gospel,” Pray.com co-founder Matthew Potter said.

“It’s a lot faster than trying to teach [him] how to speak Spanish and all these other languages.”

The mobile app’s technology goes beyond merely dubbing a pastor’s message into another language by a native speaker. It captures the pastor’s expressions, inflections and intonations to create a seamless sermon experience in a different language.

“We can match the tonality in [Mr. Graham’s] voice in the other language,” such as Mandarin Chinese, Mr. Potter said. “So when Jack is getting excited and passionate about something, you don’t lose that passion, through the tonality, in the new language.”

Such technology is not confined to the spiritual sphere. HeyGen, an AI-focused company in Los Angeles and San Francisco, offers a video translation service “that clones your natural speaking voice and style” for delivery in more than 40 languages. 

Microsoft Corp. has created a research website detailing its VALL-E (X) digital encoder, which “can generate high-quality speech in the target language via just one speech utterance in the source language as a prompt” while retaining the speaker’s accent.

“VALL-E (X) is purely a research project. Currently, we have no plans to incorporate VALL-E (X) into a product or expand access to the public,” Microsoft said in an email. “We will also put Microsoft AI principles into practice when further developing the models.”

Mr. Graham, whose “Power Point” radio and television broadcasts have long been a staple on Christian stations in 800 U.S. cities and 113 countries, lauded the technology.

He told The Washington Times that the Pray.com app, which has clocked 40 million downloads of his “Bible in a Year” daily podcast, has reached audiences beyond the radio dial. The podcast’s reach can be as much as 10 times that of his broadcasts if only 10% of those 40 million downloads are active.

“Pray.com has given us an opportunity to reach more people than we could possibly imagine,” Mr. Graham said. “And upcoming not only in English, but in various languages in the world through artificial intelligence, which is truly an amazing technology today.”

Mr. Potter, who heads strategic relationships at Pray.com, said the firm expects to roll out the AI enhancement “to the rest of the incredible pastors” on the app. He said Andrew Farley, host of radio’s “The Grace Message,” will “speak” in Spanish and Portuguese, and Mr. Evans, whose “Urban Alternative” has a vast U.S. radio audience, “really wanted Swahili, and so we’ve now made that available.”

A chance meeting at a coffee shop between Mr. Potter and a friend, Steve Gatena, preceded Pray.com’s genesis in 2016. Mr. Gatena had become a Christian after a spiritual crisis over the death of his aerial production company partner in a plane crash during a movie shoot in Colombia.

Mr. Gatena decided to create a web destination for Christians. Mr. Potter — who had spent a decade at the helm of HomeStack, an app development company serving the real estate industry — jumped at the opportunity.

“I said, ‘Steve, that’s just providence. I’ll help you build Pray.com. I’ll do it for free,’” Mr. Potter said. “And the next day, I stepped down as CEO of my company. I put my business partner Will [Grewal] as CEO, and he’s done an incredible job.”

Mr. Potter said he remains chairman of HomeStack.

Pray.com’s co-founders include chief technology officer Ryan Beck and chief financial officer Michael Lynn.

Within 18 months of its founding, Pray.com attracted its first round of venture capital funding and had raised $34.10 million as of March 2020, according to investment tracking firm PitchBook.

Pray.com is a privately held, for-profit company that offers more than 500,000 pieces of content for free and relies on advertising and consumer subscriptions for revenue, Mr. Potter said.