AI Jesus: Modern miracle or work of the devil?
FILE-People pray with priests inside a church. (Photo by Frédéric Soltan/Corbis via Getty Images)
Researchers and religious leaders released findings from a two-month experiment through art in a Catholic chapel in Switzerland, where an avatar of "Jesus" on a computer screen took questions from visitors on faith, morality, and modern-day woes, and provided answers based on Scripture.
Visitors introduced a variety of topics to the "AI Jesus," including true love, the afterlife, war and suffering in the world, the existence of God, and issues like sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church.
A chapel’s assistant tells the Associated Press that the idea was to recognize the importance of artificial intelligence in human lives, even when it comes to religion, and explore the limits of human trust in a machine.
The AP reported that after the two-month run of the "Deus in Machina" exhibit at Peter’s Chapel starting in late August, some 900 conversations from visitors were recorded anonymously.
An AI video generator from Heygen, an online tool that uses AI to create videos, was used to produce voice and video from a real person.
Philipp Haslbauer, an IT specialist at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, shared with the AP that there were no specific safeguards used "because we observed GPT-4o to respond fairly well to controversial topics."
According to the AP, Haslbauer helped assemble the technical side of the project, telling the AP that the AI responsible for taking the role of "AI Jesus" and generating responses was GPT-4o by OpenAI, and an open-source version of the company’s Whisper was used for speech comprehension.
‘Work of the Devil’?
Marco Schmid, a chapel theologian, who led the project, tells the AP that most visitors who interacted with "AI Jesus" were aged 40 to 70, and more Catholic respondents found the experience exciting compared to Protestants, the AP noted, citing the report.
Schmid explained to the AP that "AI Jesus" is an artistic experiment to get people to think about the dynamic between the digital and the divine, not a substitute for human interaction or religious confessions with a priest, and it also was not intended to save pastoral resources.
Regarding the technology in the chapel, Haslbauer questioned "AI Jesus" about its message for a troubled world, and about whether AI could be helpful as a way for people to find God, the AP reported.
While the exhibit was a pilot project Schmid tells the AP he does not anticipate a second coming of "AI Jesus" anytime soon.