AI Is Replacing Us and You Don’t Even Realize It Yet

With the rise of AI, are real flesh and blood artists becoming obsolete? The viral band Velvet Sundown might suggest the answer is yes. Welcome to Provoke and Inspire, where I wrestle with culture and current events by asking what would Jesus think and what would Jesus do.

In case you haven't heard, Velvet Sundown was an AI project that gained a lot of traction, fame, and infamy. From the outside looking in, it was fairly obvious that it wasn’t real. Yet it had hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners on Spotify. The story has developed since, and it’s now clear that it was, in fact, fully AI. Initially, there was some deception. It was presented as being merely inspired by AI with real people behind it. But it turns out Velvet Sundown was never a real band. It was a provocative, AI-driven art project that successfully fooled the industry and exposed just how fragile the line between real and fake has become.

Artists especially, but more broadly followers of Jesus, need to seriously wrestle with what this means. Everyone I talk to today is concerned, at least on some level, about AI and its implications. And I think that concern is justified. At the surface, if you're in a profession being threatened by AI, the concern is simple: will I have a job in a year? In a month?

But deeper than that is the question of what it means to be human. What aspects of our humanity are being threatened? From a secular worldview, the concern goes even further. If your framework is based on survival of the fittest, the idea that the superior thing eventually replaces the inferior, then isn’t AI just the next step in evolution? If something outproduces and outperforms me, maybe it should replace me. From this perspective, there’s no real basis for defending the unique value of humanity. Art, beauty, and relationships are reduced to survival tools—chemical processes in motion, not sacred or meaningful in any ultimate sense.

If you take the evolutionary and reductionist view, there is no firm ground to resist AI’s advance. And if you shift to a purely economic lens, history tells a bleak story. Whatever is mass-produced cheapest tends to win. We’d like to think people will choose the authentic over the fake, but look at the food industry. Despite knowing what’s good for us, we consistently opt for cheap, highly processed, chemical-laden food that is literally killing us. Why should we expect anything different when it comes to art?

We might say, “Yeah, it’s not a real band, but this song slaps.” Or, “This movie was entirely made by AI, but it was still great.” That’s how it goes. History is full of examples where convenience and entertainment win over authenticity.

So yes, this vision is bleak. But this channel, this podcast, is about how to follow Jesus in a post-Christian world—and AI is now part of that world. So what do we do?

As followers of Jesus, we have the worldview and resources to understand and defend our humanity. Making, creating, feeling, forming relationships—these are not evolutionary leftovers. They are part of our divine inheritance. They come from being made in the image of God. The world is going to need people who can say, “No, we need to protect these things. They matter. They are essential to who we are.”

Regardless of the economic forces and the technical advantages AI may offer, we don’t create just because of instinct. We create because it reflects the nature of God. It’s how we worship. It’s how we challenge culture and reveal truth. And as followers of Jesus, we know our identity. We are sons and daughters of the living God. We know our purpose is to love God and serve others. We know we are meant to build real communities and make things that reflect truth and beauty.

As AI becomes more dominant and invasive, we have to remind people who they are. I believe there will be a hunger for the real—real community, real art, real beauty. But secularism doesn’t have a foundation to create those things. It borrows from the Judeo-Christian worldview but cannot sustain it.

So, as this threat grows, followers of Jesus need to stand up. Remind the world what makes us human. Defend our sacred inheritance in a culture that will be flooded with artificial substitutes. The real value in the future will be found in those who know the truth, know who they are, and can build authentic relationships and create with integrity.

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Peace.