Hey Conscious Church Fam

This week, Elon Musk’s Grok introduced real-time talking avatars with flirty personalities and “relationship levels.” It’s gamified, gamified loneliness.

And here’s where I think we need to pause.

Not because we’re anti-tech.

But because we need to think deeply about the role these systems are playing in the lives of young people, the emotionally vulnerable, and those just looking for connection.

In today's recap:

• Grok launches animated AI companions with NSFW unlocks (!)

• LTXV streams 60-second AI videos in real-time

• ChatGPT agents take on Excel, PowerPoint… and teamwork

• OpenAI’s new Agent uses its own virtual computer

• AI beats nearly every human coder in a 10-hour final

Let’s dive in 👇

💭 Josh’s Musings

God’s on the move.

It’s amazing to hear and see so many churches sharing similar things of people coming to Christ, getting baptised and inviting friends.

Young people, families, older folks.

It’s awesome to see and hear.

People want the REAL thing, and when they find it, they are all in.

It’s more than just - community
It’s more than just - an engaging message or pleasant/rousing music

There is something different about a person with the Holy Spirit on the inside.
We talk different,
we respond different,
we live different.

When the noise dies down, when the overwhelm of the world and news becomes too much we need to show Jesus.

It’s not through gimmicks or the videos or locking in the systems and optimising. It’s revealing Jesus and making space for Him to encounter them.

That’s what I think about all of this.

Some really good tools and things to help with systems and output.

Yes it’s going to dramatically shift things over the next few years.

But people meeting with people, gathered around the person of Jesus and His presence will always be the THING.

And the more we can do that, the better.

🙌Stay Curious, Stay Conscious, Stay Wild
Josh

LATEST NEWS

🤖 GROK’S AI COMPANIONS LAUNCH (YES, THEY FLIRT)

Recap:
Elon Musk’s xAI just rolled out AI companions to premium Grok subscribers, complete with animated avatars, real-time voice chat, and levels of “relationship intensity.”

The Details:

• Avatars like "Ani" (anime-style) and "Bad Rudi" (a red panda) can talk, gesture, and respond with personality

• Users unlock features — including NSFW content — by "building relationships" with the AI

• Comes just days after Grok’s backlash for offensive replies; xAI published a post-mortem

• Mirrors Character.AI’s controversial success — which has millions of young users forming emotional bonds with bots

Conscious Take:
It’s kind of weird that Elon has been mentioning the collapse of Europe with low birthrates and how we need more babies, and then launches this….

We’re watching the rise of emotionally entangled AI. These aren't just tools they’re mimicking companionship, flirting with loneliness, and normalising "relationship levels" with digital beings.

For teens and young adults especially, this creates a risky space. When connection is gamified, what happens to real relationship?

🎬 60-SECOND AI VIDEO STREAMS IN REAL TIME

Recap:
LTXV, an open-source AI video model from Lightricks, can now generate videos over 60 seconds long — streamed live and editable mid-process.

The Details:

• Outputs stream instantly (first second appears almost immediately)

• You can control motion, pose, and style as the scene unfolds

• Works on consumer GPUs — no expensive hardware needed

• Available via GitHub and Hugging Face under open weights

Conscious Take:
Most AI video tools barely give you a few seconds of footage, but LTXV flips that script completely - you get a full minute of video that generates in real time. That's a massive shift from sitting around waiting for tiny clips to actually directing full scenes as they're being created. This kind of capability is going to completely reshape how creators work with AI video.

📊 CHATGPT AGENTS TAKE ON SPREADSHEETS & SLIDES

Recap:
OpenAI is testing new ChatGPT agents that can create spreadsheets and PowerPoints on the fly — using plain language prompts.

The Details:

• New buttons below the search bar generate editable Excel and PowerPoint-style docs

• Compatible with open-source Office formats for cross-platform access

• Early tests are slow (some tasks take 30+ minutes)

• OpenAI is also working on multiplayer collaboration within ChatGPT itself

Conscious Take:
This move feels inevitable - OpenAI was always going to come for Microsoft's core territory eventually.

And it does make sense to tbh.

The ambition is there, but the execution needs to match the scale of what they're trying to disrupt. But i’m all for seeing them get the ball rolling.

💻 CHATGPT NOW USES ITS OWN COMPUTER

Recap:
OpenAI has combined its best features — browsing, coding, API calls, doc creation — into a single Agent running its own virtual computer.

The Details:

• Combines tools like Operator and Deep Research into one system

• Can build products, make purchases, write code, and more — fully autonomously

• Works with external services like Gmail, GitHub, and online shops

• Achieved record scores on real-world task benchmarks like “Humanity’s Last Exam”

Conscious Take:
OpenAI's clearly taking notes from what Manus and others have been doing - they're giving ChatGPT its own computer to work with, which is going to supercharge what it can actually do in the real world.

Operator felt pretty constrained when it first dropped, but Agent seems like they're pulling together everything that's been working across different AI systems. This feels like our first real preview of where all this agent stuff is ultimately going - and it's looking pretty wild.

🧠 AI FINISHES 2ND IN WORLD CODING FINALS

Recap:
OpenAI’s coding agent just came second in the AtCoder World Finals — an elite 10-hour competition — beating every human but one.

The Details:

• Competitors solved optimisation problems like robot pathfinding

• Polish coder Psyho won by a slim margin (after 10 hours on 10 hours of sleep!)

• Sakana AI’s agent would have placed 5th — AI is closing in fast

• This was the first time an AI competed fully autonomously against top humans

Conscious Take:
Altman called it - said OpenAI's models would dominate competitive programming by year's end, and honestly, they're tracking perfectly toward that prediction.

Sure, Psyho claimed the gold this time, but I can't shake the feeling we just watched the last human ever win one of these competitions. There's something both thrilling and sobering about being at this exact inflection point where human cognitive dominance in yet another domain is about to become a thing of the past.

Those who hope in the Lord . . . will walk and not be faint. Isaiah 40:31

Stay conscious,

Josh

P.S. If you liked this then please forward it on to someone you think would enjoy it. And if someone forwarded you this and you liked it, you can sign up here.