Is an “AI Jesus” what the world needs now?
A Catholic chapel in Switzerland recently reported on its two-month experiment in which it offered an AI-driven chatbot resembling Jesus to all its visitors. According to a reporter from NBC’s Today Show, the chapel deemed the experiment a “great success.”
As The Guardian reported, after training the AI program in theological texts, visitors were invited to pose questions to a long-haired image of Jesus beamed through a latticework screen. The avatar responded in real time, offering up answers generated through artificial intelligence.
The intersection of the digital and the divine
The chatbot was placed inside a confessional in Lucerne’s St. Peter’s Chapel, where it was clearly marked for all visitors as an artistic experiment. Chapel theologian Marco Schmid was clear that human priests remained available at all times for traditional confessions, and that this pilot project was not intended to save pastoral resources.
Additionally, according to an AP story, Schmid was quick to point out that the “AI Jesus” – billed as a “Jesus-like” persona – was intended to make people think about the intersection between the digital and the divine, and that it was not to be seen as a substitute for either human interaction or sacramental confessions with a priest.
“People were advised not to disclose any personal information and [to] confirm that they knew they were engaging with the avatar at their own risk. ‘It’s not a confession,’ said Schmid. ‘We are not intending to imitate a confession.’”
Schmid further observed, “What was really interesting (was) to see that the people really talked with him in a serious way. They didn’t come to make jokes.”
In fact, visitors brought up many topics, including true love, the afterlife, feelings of solitude, war and suffering in the world, the existence of God, in addition to issues such as the sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church or its position on homosexuality.
Positive reviews, but some negative attention
Over the two-month period, approximately 900 visitors had conversations with “AI Jesus,” all of which were transcribed anonymously. The project was deemed a success: Visitors apparently often came out of the confessional moved or deep in thought, they found it easy to use, and some made use of “AI Jesus” more than once. Three hundred visitors completed a survey afterwards, 67% of whom described the experience as “very positive.
Some observers, however, were much less enthused about the project. Philipp Haslbauer, an IT specialist at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, was responsible for the technical side of the project. He indicated that he was sensitive to public reaction and has noted chatter on social media saying the project is “blasphemous” or the “work of the devil.” As Haslbauer put it, “If you read comments on the internet about it, some are very negative — which is scary.”
Focusing on the technical side of the project, Haslbauer indicated that OpenAI’s GPT-4o took on the role of “AI Jesus” and generating responses, and an open-source version of the company’s Whisper tool was used for speech comprehension.
Additionally, an AI video generator from HeyGen was used to produce voice and video, and Haslbauer said no specific safeguards were used “because we observed GPT-4o to respond fairly well to controversial topics.”
When asked whether the chapel would repeat the experiment, Schmid initially indicated that it was a one-time event, but later, according to the AP report, he seemed to waver, given the international interest in the project. "We are discussing ... how we could revive him again,” he said, noting interest from parishes, schoolteachers, researchers and others as the project received global media attention. “They all are interested and would like to have this ‘AI Jesus’. So we have now a little bit to reflect on how we want to continue.”
Interestingly, the chatbot officially was called “Deus in Machina,” or “God in the Machine,” a subtle twist on the popular Latin phrase “Deus ex Machina” (or “God from the Machine”), which typically refers to a literary plot device of having a highly unlikely event miraculously resolve a seemingly intractable problem.
