If you call the Rev. Justin Lester in the middle of the night, there’s a good chance you’ll hear his voice on the other end.

Well, it’s sort of his .

The voice is coming from an AI responder trained on hundreds of his sermons, writings and speaking style, programmed to sound like the California pastor.

The Rev. Lester, who leads Friendship Baptist Church-Vallejo in California, uses AI to respond to emails, directly schedule meetings and tend to myriad administrative tasks that take hours — all without him doing a thing.

“It just automatically knows what I would say,” he said.

Using AI freed the Rev. Lester up to do what he as a pastor had been trained to do — preach the gospel and shepherd his community by visiting hospitals, retirement centers and building relationships. By offload

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