AI Features Overview

TimelyChurch includes a built-in AI assistant powered by xAI's Grok large language model (currently grok-3). The AI works with your actual church data -- events, people, groups, announcements, and more -- to provide accurate, personalized responses rather than generic answers.

Provider note: All AI features today are served by xAI Grok via the api.x.ai endpoint. Your church's data anonymization (see What the AI Knows) sits between TimelyChurch and the provider, so personally-identifiable information is tokenized before any external call.

What Can the AI Do?

TimelyChurch AI includes three core capabilities:

1. Admin AI Chat Assistant

A conversational assistant available to church administrators and leaders directly within the admin dashboard. It can:

• Answer questions about your church data ("How many active members do we have?")
• Query your database for statistics, demographics, and breakdowns
• Search for people, events, and groups
• Draft announcements and events on your behalf
• Update membership records (with your confirmation)
• Generate insights like age distributions, gender breakdowns, and birthday lists

2. Member AI Chat Assistant

A public-facing chat widget that members and visitors can use on your church's portal. It can:

• Answer common questions about your church (service times, location, contact info)
• Share information about upcoming events and current announcements
• Provide details about ministries and programs
• Respond to frequently asked questions you have configured
• Offer a warm, welcoming experience to newcomers exploring your church

3. AI Content Generation

Inline "Generate" buttons appear on supported content forms. The full set of nine generation types is configured in config/ai.php:

• Announcement
• Event description
• Discussion questions (lessons)
• Lesson plan
• Follow-up message
• Email draft
• Sermon summary
• Devotional
• General

Status note: Inline "AI Assistant" Generate panels are now live across the admin interface, including the Forms builder (form description and confirmation message), Announcements, Events (event description), Sermons (description and transcript), Lessons (discussion questions), and Follow-ups (notes). All generation types are also available through the AI Assistant chat. Generate buttons appear only when the content-generation feature is enabled for your plan.

How It Uses Your Data

The AI assistant does not rely on pre-written templates or generic church information. It connects to your actual TimelyChurch data in real time:

• People records -- membership counts, demographics, birthday lists, status breakdowns
• Events -- upcoming and recent events with dates, times, and locations
• Announcements -- currently active announcements and their content
• Groups/Classes -- active groups and their member counts
• Custom training data -- FAQs, service times, beliefs, and policies you provide

All queries are scoped to your church. The AI cannot see data from other churches on the platform.

Privacy and Safety

TimelyChurch takes data privacy seriously in its AI implementation:

• Data anonymization -- When personal data (names, emails, phone numbers) is processed, it is anonymized before being sent to the AI service. You see real names on your screen, but the AI only sees anonymized tokens.
• No deletions -- The AI cannot delete any records. It can only create drafts or update statuses with your explicit confirmation.
• Draft-only creation -- Announcements and events created by the AI are always saved as inactive drafts. You must review and publish them yourself.
• Confirmation required -- Any action that modifies data (like updating a member's status) requires you to review a preview and explicitly confirm before it takes effect.
• Permission-aware -- The AI respects your role and permission level. Team leaders only see data for their assigned groups. Members see only public information.
• Audit logging -- All AI tool executions and data queries are logged for accountability.

Plan Requirements

AI features are available on plans that include AI access. You can check your plan's AI status on the Settings > AI Settings page. If your current plan does not include AI, you will see upgrade options with details about AI limits included in each plan.

Getting Started

1. Navigate to Settings > AI Settings to verify AI is enabled for your plan.
2. Add training data (service times, FAQs, beliefs) to improve the AI's responses.
3. Click the purple chat bubble in the bottom-right corner of any admin page to start a conversation.
4. Look for "AI Assistant" generate buttons on content forms throughout the admin interface.

Tip: The more training data you provide (service times, church policies, FAQs, ministry descriptions), the more accurate and helpful the AI's responses will be -- especially for member-facing chat.