Meet Rabb.AI, your Passover commentator for the new intelligent Haggadah
Why is this night different from any other night? Because this year, two Israelis have created an artificial intelligence rabbi to help you navigate the seder
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
Two Jerusalem creatives — a graphic designer and photographer, and an architect — have built what is almost certainly the world’s first Haggadah devised by artificial intelligence, or AI.
Yitz Woolf, a Canadian-born designer-photographer, who has lived in Israel for 17 years, teamed up with native Jerusalemite Royi Shamir to work on the Haggadah, built with two computer programs, ChatGPT and Midjourney.
As Royi explained: “We were playing with various AI models and enjoyed the results. So we tried to think how to make it relevant to Jewish learning and the Jewish world — and we thought that the Haggadah would be perfect to do that”.
ChatGPT was only released in November 2022, and the two men began working with it, finding that the program was able to generate “divrei Torah and midrashim” which were “entirely new and unique”.
Yitz said: “Midjourney became popular in the artist community: you could say that it is the visual equivalent of ChatGPT. So it will create an image in, say, the baroque style, or we could tell it to give us an image of a bottle and [the program will] go through however many millions of references that it has, in order to give you the particular bottle you want”.
With the aid of a cartoon figure called — inevitably — Rabb.AI — the reader of Haggad.AI can navigate his or her way through the Pesach story. Though this was originally an Internet creation, Woolf and Shamir are printing copies for sale in time for Pesach, so observant readers will be able to use it on Seder night.
Our chunky little robot rabbi, who bears some resemblance to Fred the Homepride flour man of the TV adverts, tells us: “As an artificial intelligence, I’m designed to offer insightful commentary, and lead you through various sections of the Passover Haggadah. I’m excited to help you engage with the Passover story in new and exciting ways, offering you a deeper understanding of the holiday and helping you connect with your faith.”
At the outset, Woolf and Shamir asked ChatGPT to write a disclaimer using Jewish references, so that the reader would be aware what was AI input and what was the traditional version of the Haggadah. “It wrote things like, ‘some people walk blindly, but the prudent man always looks where he’s going, be careful about using me’. But then it came up with a midrash that had a Talmudic conversation of rabbis discussing what was the most important part of the Seder. And it said that this was Magid. In fact, our Haggadah starts — as normal — with Kadesh.”
When the two men asked friends about the AI “solution” of giving incorrect prominence to the Magid section of the Seder, they realised that the conflicting answers tied in with the whole essence of the Seder — to ask questions, and to discover the hidden.
So Haggad.AI contains ChatGPT generated commentary, and some fascinating illustrations, too, when Midjourney, for example, portrays a Lego-like El Al plane as the image for “Next Year in Jerusalem”, or stunning black-and-white portraits of the same child wearing four different wigs, to show the four sons, the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask. Cleverly, the right-hand column of each page shows the reader which cup of wine is being drunk, while Rabb.AI’s cheerful figure will indicate what is ChatGPT commentary compared with the original.
The two creators believe that creating a Haggadah with AI will “make it more approachable for the digital nomad generation”. It is certainly fascinating, engaging, and thought-provoking — a unique blend of technology and tradition.
You can order your copy of Haggad.AI here
• The image used in the print version of the article was created by Jordi Pol, designer of the Jewish Chronicle.
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