Navigating Cultural Shifts

During my time here, our team had the unique opportunity to meet with House Church leaders from our former province. They shared a vital concern: our Bible-reading website currently features images that look "too Muslim," which could cause unnecessary problems for users in the current climate.

Twelve years ago, when I helped launch the site, we carefully curated those images to show our audience that "people who look and dress like you are free to ask these questions". We wanted to demonstrate that following Jesus isn't just a "Western" thing to do. However, over the last decade, the local government has taken a heavy-handed approach to ridding the area of outward manifestations of Islam. Consequently, the website requires a major overhaul to protect its visitors.

My new task is to identify images that are now deemed "inappropriate"—such as women with head coverings or men with long beards—and suggest alternatives. Because of low literacy rates in parts of the province, audio and visual navigation are essential. However, finding biblical illustrations where characters aren't wearing head coverings is surprisingly difficult! My AI training has become an unexpected blessing; I am now writing prompts to create new images of inanimate objects, like Aaron’s budding staff, to represent each story visually.