Hey {{first_name|Conscious Church Fam}}
What a week. OpenAI quietly killed one of its flashiest products, Wikipedia decided humans should still be the ones writing Wikipedia, and Anthropic shipped something that means Claude can now sit at your computer and work while you’re on your phone. Normal stuff.
In today's recap:
OpenAI kills Sora: Six months in, one Disney deal later — Sora gets the axe
Wikipedia draws the line: A 44-2 vote to ban AI-written articles
Claude takes the wheel: Anthropic’s Dispatch hands Claude your computer while you’re on your phone
Let's dive in 👇
🧠 Josh's Musings
My little girl turns six on Tuesday. I'm not sure where those years went but they didn't ask before leaving.
It's been a full on few months.
Our car got stolen a while back, the replacement was a disaster, back and forth to the dealer before we eventually just cut our losses. On Friday we finally picked up the one I should have just gone for in the first place haha.
Took Judah down to London for the day just me and the boy and drove it home together. It was nice to just sit and drive for a few hours in the evening and letting thoughts ponder and wander.
The last few months have been relentless with work. Easter, events, design projects. Good stuff, fun stuff, but full on. And I'm grateful for it. I'm good at what I do and it puts food on the table and provides for my family. That matters. That's not nothing.
But there are these other dreams. Ones that aren't digital. Ones that aren't design. Big dreams that require big resource and honestly I don't have a clue where to begin with most of them. And so they just sit there. Not forgotten. Just... kind of waiting for something I can't quite name.
The comfort zone is in what I know.
And staying in it isn't wrong.
Providing isn't wrong.
Being faithful where you are isn't wrong.
But when there's something else and you know there's something else and you can't shake it no matter how busy you keep yourself... That's an invitation.
I don't think God is in a rush. But I also think sometimes He's waiting for us to take that first step before He reveals the second one. Not because He's withholding. Because the revelation is activated in motion.
You don't get the map before you leave the house. You get the next turn when you start walking.
That's uncomfortable for someone like me who wants the whole plan laid out before I move.
Anyone else?
One of the things I have been building that is actually nearly there is a little tool called Sermon Spread. It takes a sermon audio file and turns it into a week's worth of discipleship content. Social posts captions and ideas, reel ideas, email recaps, small group guides. Simple, practical, not overwhelming.
I used to do this manually for a church every Monday morning for years. That's where the line came from. "Don't let your sermon die on a Sunday." I eventually set up some workflows to help other churches do similar but it was never ‘one-click’ easy enough. So I built a little dashboard to test it. One place, minimal faff, Christ centred content throughout the week.
It's nearly ready. Just a couple of things to sort before I open it up wider. If you're involved in a church and you've ever thought it would be nice to stretch that Sunday message further through the week, this is exactly why I built it. Let me know if that sounds useful and I'll make sure you're first to know when it goes live.
Sometimes the hardest part isn't building the thing. It's believing it's worth finishing and putting out there.
🙌 Stay Curious, Stay Conscious, Stay Wild
Josh
LATEST NEWS
Image: The Conscious Church / Nano Banana 2
Six months after launching a dedicated mobile app, and three months after inking a $1 billion deal with Disney, OpenAI has pulled the plug on Sora. The app goes dark in April, the API follows in September. Downloads had fallen nearly 75% from their November peak, and internally Sora was being called a “side quest” draining compute that could go toward more important things. That more important thing is a model called “Spud,” which Altman says will “really accelerate the economy.” The Sora team is pivoting to world simulation for robotics. The Disney deal is on ice.
The Details:
The app closes April 2026, API in September — a two-stage wind-down
Downloads fell 75% from their November peak — employees described it as draining valuable compute for little return
Freed compute goes toward “Spud,” OAI’s next major model — Altman says it’s expected in weeks and will “really accelerate the economy”
Disney’s $1B partnership and IP licensing deal is now on ice following the shutdown
Sora’s team pivots to “world simulation” for robotics — Sora head Bill Peebles calls the new goal “automating the physical economy”
Conscious Take:
I guess an app that uses lots of compute for pure SLOP, isn’t (thankfully) the ‘right’ direction. The “side quest” framing didn’t come from nowhere, it was language used by Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s Applications CEO, weeks before the shutdown. Big changes are underway, and “Spud” is going to tell us a lot about where this is all heading.
Image: Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s volunteer editors voted 44-2 to ban AI-generated content from the site’s English-language articles. Using an LLM to write or rewrite article content is now prohibited. Two exceptions: basic grammar fixes on your own writing, and first-pass translations. The policy author called it “a pushback against enshittification.” StackOverflow and German Wikipedia have similar rules; Spanish Wikipedia banned AI from all editorial work. Meanwhile, AI-generated text reportedly surpassed human output online for the first time in 2025, and Elon Musk is building Grokipedia in the opposite direction.
The Details:
Volunteer editors voted 44-2 to ban AI-generated content from English Wikipedia articles
Two narrow exceptions: grammar fixes on your own writing, and first-pass translations (with a human doing the thinking)
The policy author described it as “a pushback against enshittification” — possibly the most accurate sentence on the internet this week
StackOverflow and German Wikipedia have similar rules; Spanish Wikipedia banned AI from all editorial work
Elon Musk is building Grokipedia — an AI-written alternative — going in the exact opposite direction
Conscious Take:
Wikipedia’s editors are volunteers who’ve spent years building one of the most useful knowledge bases on earth. They don’t want to watch it fill up with confident-sounding nonsense. The 44-2 vote wasn’t even close.
What’s worth watching is whether this holds, the pressure to “just let AI help a little” will only grow, and Wikipedia’s biggest challenge isn’t the ban itself, it’s enforcement at the scale of millions of edits.
Image: Anthropic
Anthropic shipped a research preview of remote computer use this week — meaning Claude can now click, type, and navigate across your Mac while you step away and manage it from your phone. The trick is a new feature called Dispatch: you fire off a task from mobile, and Claude gets to work on your desktop in the background. When it’s done, the conversation syncs back to your phone. It’s Mac-only for now (Pro and Max plans), with Windows coming. Anthropic acquired a computer use startup called Vercept in February, and this is their first product launch after just four weeks on the team.
The Details:
You fire off a task from the Claude mobile app, and Claude works on your desktop in the background
When it’s done, the conversation syncs back to your phone — so you can review and continue from mobile
The system tries to use direct app integrations and browser APIs first before resorting to clicking around your screen
Currently Mac-only for Pro and Max plan users, with a Windows version on the way
Anthropic acquired computer use startup Vercept in February — Dispatch is their first product launch, shipped just four weeks after the acquisitio
Conscious Take:
Anthropic’s Alex Albert put it well: “the future where I never have to open my laptop to get work done is becoming real very fast.” This feels like a genuine step change — not AI that answers questions, but AI that does the work while you’re doing something else.
Anthropic is moving fast right now!
📬 One quick ask...
If this email has been helpful, would you forward it to one person this week who might be interested?
Could be a friend in ministry, a creative who's curious about AI, someone trying to figure out how to build with Kingdom purpose.
I'd love to see this grow and reach more people. And honestly, personal recommendations mean way more than any algorithm.
Thanks for reading. Really.
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters." — Colossians 3:23
Build with the tools. But build for the right reasons.
That's all for now
Stay conscious,
Josh
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