Hey Conscious Church Fam

There were some big moves this week with Anthropic (Claude) launching a new model and OpenAI Sora launching in Europe. Plus Alexa finally gets smart.

In today's recap:

🔎 How AI just learned to show its work
🎥 OpenAI’s video tool lands in the UK
🔊 Alexa gets an AI brain
❤️ AI that ‘understands’ you

Let’s dive in 👇

This newsletter is in its infancy. Would you be up for sharing it with a friend or on social media if you think it's helpful? 🙂 

💭 Josh’s Musings

Church creativity has always lived in the gap between big vision and tiny budget.

We dream in cinematic widescreen. Our execution? More like church hall skit.

For years, ideas have been trapped—not because they weren't good, but because they felt impossible. Too expensive. Too complex. Too out of reach.

But what if they weren't?

What if the only thing standing between your idea and reality... was the belief that you can start?

This Changes Everything.

Imagine the content you could create for Easter. Not just another stock-footage sermon bumper—but a fully AI-generated short film, immersing people in the story!
(Midjourney → Kling/Sora)

What if we saw Jonah and the Whale—from Jonah's perspective?

What if we stood inside the lion's den with Daniel, watching the beasts circle?

What if kids could experience the parting of the Red Sea in a way that made the Bible come alive?

And it's not just storytelling.

Want a new church website? You could build one today. (Although that’s my bread and butter so if you need a site – let’s chat!)

Dreamed of launching an online course? AI will guide you step by step.

Need a tool to streamline discipleship? You don't need a dev team anymore.

The playing field hasn't just leveled—it's inviting you onto it! 🙌

This week, I sat in on a Twitter Space where a pro designer raced against a no-code builder to create a website in 45 minutes. The designer won (Thankfully).

But we're now at a point where anyone can build. Fast.

For too long, churches and creatives have been stuck copying what we've seen at big conferences. But what if we stopped stealing ideas and started creating the things God put in our hearts?

🚀 It's Time to Build.

Maybe you've had a dream sitting in your heart for years. A project. A tool. A story. But you told yourself I don't have the skills. I don't have the team. I don't have the money.

But now? Those aren't barriers anymore. Not even close!

So here's my challenge: Ask God if there's a dream you've put down that He's calling you to pick back up.

Then start talking to the tools. Literally—open up ChatGPT and speak your idea. "I want to build X. How do I start?" Let it walk you through.

We are no longer in a world where you need a full team and a massive budget to bring a vision to life.

You just need to start.

What would you create if you stopped waiting and just took the first step?

Because the ones who move now—they're the ones who will shape what's next. ✨

✌️ Josh

LATEST NEWS

ANTHROPIC

🧠 CLAUDE EVOLVES: THE ERA OF VISIBLE REASONING

Recap: Anthropic has launched Claude 3.7 Sonnet, introducing the first "hybrid reasoning" AI that allows users to choose between quick responses and a new extended thinking mode that reveals the model's reasoning process.

The Details:

• Users can toggle between standard responses and "extended thinking" mode where Claude shows its full reasoning via a scratchpad interface

• API users gain precise control over thinking duration (up to 128K tokens), balancing efficiency, cost, and quality

• The model sets new benchmarks in coding performance, outperforming competitors like DeepSeek R1 and OpenAI's offerings

• Anthropic simultaneously released Claude Code, a command-line coding assistant that can edit files, read code, and write/run tests (currently in limited research preview)

Conscious Take: There’s profound value in systems that don’t just present conclusions but also reveal their reasoning. Seeing the why behind an outcome helps us understand and trust the process.

The same is true in leadership. It’s not just about transparency—it’s about vulnerability. Transparency simply shares information; vulnerability costs something. But for what it’s worth, your team values seeing how you wrestle with decisions and work things out. That’s often where the deepest learning happens.

OPEN AI

✨ SORA EXPANDS: AI VIDEO CREATION REACHES EUROPE

Recap: OpenAI has expanded access to its groundbreaking Sora video generation platform to the UK and EU markets after its US-only launch in December. The standalone service remains exclusive to paying ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, with higher tiers receiving enhanced generation capabilities.

The Details:

• ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) and Pro ($200/month) subscribers in the UK, EU, and select European countries can now access Sora

• The platform operates separately from ChatGPT but uses the same authentication credentials

• Users can transform text prompts into sophisticated videos after age verification

• The service is also available in Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland

Conscious Take: I’ve been watching people use Sora and played with it myself. It’s incredible to see how it can take a photo and or a text prompt and turn it into a video. I saw this great example of ‘reimagining San Francisco’ this week.

Just think how amazing this tool could be for a sermon bumper for Jonah, or Daniel, or David. Or for kids camp material, or an event promo. Or just for resources for your community… Food for thought.

AMAZON

🔊 AMAZON REINVENTS ALEXA FOR THE AI AGE

Recap: Amazon has unveiled Alexa+, a complete redesign of its voice assistant platform now powered by advanced AI capabilities. The new system moves beyond simple commands to offer genuinely helpful assistant features, including complex task completion and seamless service integration.

The Details:

• The revamped system can select from multiple AI models including Amazon's Nova and Anthropic's Claude based on task requirements

• Alexa+ can now execute complex multi-step processes like booking reservations, ordering groceries, and purchasing tickets

• New capabilities include document analysis, preference memory, and integration with hundreds of external services

• Priced at $19.99 monthly but included with Amazon Prime membership, with US rollout beginning next month

Conscious Take: This is long overdue, in my opinion. After using ChatGPT for a couple of years, Alexa (and to be fair, Siri) has always felt rather unintelligent in comparison. So I’m genuinely excited to see this become actually useful! It seems like the expectation across software and services now is shifting—ambient intelligence is becoming the norm, and we’re moving toward a world where ‘smart’ isn’t just a feature, but a baseline.

OPEN AI

💭 EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE: GPT-4.5 PRIORITISES INTERACTION QUALITY

Recap: OpenAI has released GPT-4.5 (Orion), focusing on improved conversational abilities and emotional intelligence rather than just technical benchmarks. The update represents a shift toward enhancing interaction quality and reducing hallucinations over raw performance metrics.

The Details:

• The model delivers more natural, intuitive conversations with improved understanding of emotional context and human intent

• GPT-4.5 produces fewer hallucinations and more accurate responses than previous versions

• Performance on technical assessments like mathematics and science remains comparable to earlier models

• Initially limited to Pro users and paid developers, with broader access coming to Plus and Team users next week

Conscious Take: This seems to be the direction these companies are chasing—making AI as human-like as possible, yet never truly human. No matter how ‘good’ these tools become—and they are impressive—they remain, at their core, just data in a database. Information without intuition. Processing without presence. Intelligence without the ability to feel.

ELEVEN LABS

🎙️ TRANSCRIPTION BREAKTHROUGH: LANGUAGE BARRIERS FALL

Recap: ElevenLabs has introduced Scribe, setting a new benchmark for speech recognition with support for 99 languages and accuracy rates exceeding 95% across dozens of languages. The system outperforms offerings from industry giants like Google and OpenAI, particularly in traditionally underserved languages.

The Details:

• Scribe achieves exceptional accuracy across 99 languages, with more than 25 languages reaching 95%+ accuracy rates

• The system brings high-quality transcription to previously neglected languages including Serbian, Cantonese, and Malayalam

• Features include multi-speaker identification, precise word-level timestamps, and non-verbal audio detection

• Priced at $0.40 per hour of transcribed audio, with a real-time version in development

Conscious Take: Language barriers no longer have to limit our ability to connect. Imagine this: You take a video, transcribe the audio, and use ChatGPT to translate it. Then, you run it through ElevenLabs, using a voice clone of yourself (or the speaker), and feed it the translated script. The result? Audio in your voice, speaking a completely different language. That’s next-level communication. Wow!

🔗 Trending Tools

• 🤖 Concierge: Talk to your apps (e.g. Gmail, Slack, Notion).

• 📝 Promptimize AI: Optimise and enhance your prompts in real time.

• 🗣️ Talo AI: Real-time AI translation for video calls.

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being
Revelation 4:11

Stay conscious,

Josh

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