Lisa and Troy on what our "no AI" promise actually means: why every study is written and researched by hand, and where we do and don't use technology to run the business.
Hey friends,
This one is a little different. Partly because of the topic, but also because it's a collaboration between your usual host, Lisa, and her husband, Troy.
We wanted to talk about the "no AI" message you've seen in our posts, our emails, and on the website. We've never really explained it, and given how sensitive the topic can be, it felt worth taking a minute to say what we actually mean.
First, we are not anti-technology. If anything, the opposite. Troy was a computer nerd growing up (his words), took his first IT job right out of high school, and still works in IT today. Our view is that technology, like most complex things, is a tool. It can be used well or poorly, and it carries real benefits and real costs for people, for society, for the environment. That's a big conversation, and there are better places than a Bible study blog to dig into all of it. What we can speak to is the choice in front of us: how we, as a small business, decide to use AI and where we decide not to.
When Lisa put her first journal on KDP back in late 2022, we had no idea how much this technology was about to reshape the world for authors. You can now go on Amazon and find entire catalogs published in months, weeks, sometimes days, that would once have been a life's work. A few good prompts and your favorite AI will generate a manuscript you can be selling within minutes.
That is the opposite of what Hamilton Publishing is. Every study is made by hand by Lisa, and made by hand means more than a nice phrase. It starts in the text itself. She reads a passage closely and sits with it, works through the context and the cross-references, studies how others have understood it, and prays over how to open it up in a way that actually helps. Only then does she begin building the prompts and reflections. A single journal takes countless hours, with the same roadblocks and breakthroughs that people who study Scripture have always run into, and when she's finished she's made something she would genuinely want to use herself. What you're holding is the fruit of real study, real prayer, and real time in the Word. The goal was never rapid growth, or hitting some number of titles in the store. We aren't judging anyone who takes the faster road. We're just saying it isn't what we feel led to do.
We believe Bible study is meant to be personal. An AI-generated study might not stand in the way of that, but to us it simply doesn't sit right. There's a difference between a tool that can arrange words about Scripture and a person who has actually studied it and been shaped by it. So our journals will keep being made this way. Our selection will grow slowly, but hopefully steadily. Our hope is that what we make proves to be a genuine help in your Walk, and that over time it earns your trust and your return.
Now, the other side of it, because we'd rather be clear than sound purer than we are. We do use AI tools to help run the business itself. Not to any extreme, but for things like maintaining the website, keeping the formatting consistent across our emails, social posts, and pages, and troubleshooting issues customers run into on the site. For that kind of work, we have no problem with it. The line we hold is simple: a person does the study and writes every word of it. The machine just helps us keep the doors open.
Thanks for reading, and for caring enough about this to want to understand it.
If any of this stirs a question, or you just want to say hello, we'd love to hear from you. You can always reach us at info@hamilton-publishing.com. We read every message.
With gratefulness,
Lisa and Troy