Hey Conscious Church Fam

The AI landscape continues to evolve at lightning speed this week—from near-perfect cancer detection to mind-blowing image generation capabilities. We're watching these systems not just create better, but actually "think" better, with profound implications for ministry and creativity.

In today's recap:

• New AI achieves 99% cancer detection accuracy

• Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro tops AI leaderboards

• OpenAI integrates image generation into GPT-4o

• Anthropic reveals how Claude "thinks"

• Quick Tutorial: Creating Studio Ghibli-style art

Let’s dive in 👇

Hey! I’m on a mission to help 10,000 churches navigate AI with practical tips and tools to help them thrive. If you know someone who could benefit, would you mind forwarding this email to them?

💭 Josh’s Musings

WOW this week has had me creating and ideating like never before. So much fun with the Studio Ghibli trend... (tutorial at bottom of email)

This week has been CRAZY with the updates and new capabilities. It's not just hype anymore. Even the normies are waking up to the reality that this is going to change everything.

The quality of output is jaw-dropping on the ChatGPT/Sora Image Generation. Whether it's creating ad copy, building a brand marketing image, writing a script, or generating content on the fly—it's all just... available. I saw someone recreate the Lord of the Rings intro using AI Studio Ghibli style: they grabbed key frames from the original, ran them through an image generator in a new art style, then animated the scenes with motion tools and synced the original audio. For about $200, they reimagined an entire cinematic opening.

Think about that. We're not far off from being able to stylise whole films, put ourselves in them, animate stories in claymation or pixel art or oil painting—whatever we imagine. The barriers are crashing down.

And yet, in the middle of all that, I found myself walking through a farm-park with the kids, watching them play with their friends and fall over in the mud. And I realised: there's something that AI will never replicate.

See, I've been creating for years—graphic design, illustration, art. I've lived in the world of execution. We used to say: Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything. But now... the playing field has shifted. Execution is accessible. You can build a brand, a website, an ad, an app in an afternoon. The quality isn't always perfect—but it's good enough.

Now, it's not about how well you execute—it's about what you can imagine.

That's exciting, especially for people who've always had ideas but never had the time, skills, or resources to bring them to life. Their moment has come.

But here's where I feel the tension. Let's say I need a product shot of a fragrance bottle in a lush forest waterfall scene. AI can do it. I've done similar things myself—grabbing stock footage, photoshopping it all together. We've all done it. It's fast, efficient. You meet the deadline.

But when I've had the chance to do it for real—get in the car, head into nature, set up the shoot—it's different. The sound of the river, the smell of the moss, the ache in your back from hiking gear across the rocks… there's a reward in the process.

You can't replicate that.

AI might create a perfect image, but it can't give you the feeling of standing under a waterfall with mist in your face. It can't offer the grounding of being in nature, of being present in the moment. It can't give you the satisfaction of wood shavings on your fingers or the smell of the fire in a cabin as you carve something by hand.

And that's something I'm learning to hold on to. Because yes—AI is accelerating everything. It's making things more accessible, more efficient. But it's also empty, in a way. It doesn't live. It doesn't bleed. It doesn't feel. It doesn't go on the journey.

There's a spiritual element to creativity that can't be copied.

The reward is not just in the finished image—it's in the doing. The making. The being-there.

So as things speed up around us—and they will—I want to stay grounded in the slow, in the tactile, in the sacred process of making. Not because it's more efficient. But because it's more true.

Josh

P.S Here are a few generations from this week..

LATEST NEWS

🔬 NEW AI'S NEAR-PERFECT CANCER DETECTION

Recap: Researchers have unveiled an AI model called ECgMLP that identifies endometrial cancer with an astonishing 99.26% accuracy from microscopic tissue images—drastically outperforming both human specialists and existing automated methods.

The Details:

• ECgMLP uses specialized attention mechanisms to spot cancer cells in tissue images that doctors might miss during standard analysis

• Current human diagnostic methods for endometrial cancer only achieve 78-81% accuracy, far below this model's 99%+ performance

• The model has proven versatile across multiple cancers, detecting colorectal (98.57%), breast (98.20%), and oral (97.34%) cancers with remarkable accuracy

Conscious Take: This is where AI becomes truly life-saving. The gap between human and AI performance in cancer detection is now undeniable.

How incredible that this level of detail/knowledge can help prevent and prolong!

🧠 GOOGLE'S GEMINI 2.5 PRO TOPS AI LEADERBOARD

Recap: Google has announced Gemini 2.5, a new family of AI models with built-in reasoning capabilities—starting with Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, which tops key benchmarks and represents Google's most intelligent model to date.

The Details:

• 2.5 Pro debuts at #1 on the LMArena leaderboard, showcasing advanced reasoning across math, science, and coding tasks

• On coding benchmarks, 2.5 Pro scores 63.8% on SWE-Bench Verified and 68.6% on Aider Polyglot—with specific strengths in web apps

• It ships with a massive 1M token context window, with plans to double to 2M for processing entire code repositories

• The model is available now in Google AI Studio and the Gemini app for Advanced subscribers

Conscious Take: As AI reasoning becomes standard rather than premium, we're witnessing the democratisation of "thinking machines."

Google is creating some really cool AI products right now in their AI Studio and rightly so. Google as we’ve known it as a search engine in my opinion will look very different going forward.

🎨 OPENAI ADDS IMAGE GENERATION TO GPT-4O, SORA

Recap: OpenAI has released image generation capabilities within its GPT-4o model and Sora video generator, shifting from separate text and image systems to a fully integrated approach for producing more precise visuals via ChatGPT.

The Details:

• GPT-4o treats images as part of its multimodal understanding, enabling more accurate text rendering and contextual awareness

• The upgrade excels at generations like menus, diagrams, and infographics with readable text—addressing a major weakness of previous models

• Users can edit images with natural language, with the model maintaining consistency between iterations

• This new capability replaces DALL-E 3 as ChatGPT's default image generator for Free, Plus, Pro, and Team users

Conscious Take: Visual communication is essential in ministry, and these advances make it accessible to everyone. I’ve been absolutely amazed at the quality of it this week. And whilst it poses very real challenges to ‘art’ as we’ve known it. It is incredibly exciting to see what people’s creativity and imagination can come up with.

🔎 ANTHROPIC REVEALS HOW CLAUDE 'THINKS'

Recap: Anthropic has released two research papers that reveal how its AI assistant Claude processes information, helping to better understand internal mechanisms that explain capabilities like multilingual reasoning and advanced planning.

The Details:

• Researchers developed an "AI microscope" that reveals internal "circuits" in the model, showing how Claude transforms input to output

• Claude uses a universal "language of thought" across different languages, with shared conceptual processing regardless of input language

• When writing poetry, Claude plans ahead several words, identifying rhyming options before constructing lines

• The team discovered a default that prevents speculation unless overridden by strong confidence, helping explain hallucination prevention

Conscious Take: Understanding how AI "thinks" is becoming crucial as these systems grow more powerful. For Christian leaders navigating AI adoption, this transparency helps build trust.

TUTORIAL 👇

How to…Studio Ghiblify yourself

Step-by-step:

1. Visit ChatGPT or Sora

2. Copy and paste or upload your photo in the chat box

3. Type ‘Create in the style of Studio Ghibli’

4. You can add in additional things like - Set me in a room of plants, set me in a relaxing cafe, etc.

5. Et Voila!!

6. Could be a fun Church Sunday Service Recap in Studio Ghibli style…(Email me the results I’d love to see)

🔗 Trending Tools

• Animate with Fal: X bot that animates any image! (FREE) - VERY FUN!!! (Just tag @animatewithfal under ANY image and watch it come to life).

• Mind Maps: Interactive visual creation tool in Google’s NotebookLM

• Ideaogram 3.0: New text-to-image AI with text & graphic design capabilities

Lord, as technology advances at breathtaking speed, help us remember the value of being present and experiencing Your creation firsthand.

Thank You for the gift of both innovation and the sacred ordinary moments of life.

Guide us to use these powerful tools with wisdom, while treasuring the irreplaceable experiences of connecting with You and others in the physical world You've made.

May we find the balance between leveraging new capabilities and staying grounded in what makes us truly human.

Stay conscious,

Josh

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