In a fully packed St. Paul’s church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth, an experimental Lutheran church service took place, almost entirely generated by artificial intelligence. The ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a huge screen above the altar, asked the believers to rise from the pews and praise the Lord. The 40-minute service, including the sermon, prayers, and music, was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna. Simmerlein asked the chatbot to develop the sermon, and the result was a solid church service that drew immense interest from the attendees of the convention of Protestants in Germany.
The Experimental AI Church Service
The AI church service was one of hundreds of events at the convention of Protestants in the Bavarian towns of Nuremberg and the neighboring Fuerth. The service was “led” by four different avatars on the screen, two young women, and two young men. The entire service was created by the AI, except for 2% that was developed by Simmerlein. The AI-generated avatar preached about leaving the past behind, focusing on the challenges of the present, overcoming fear of death, and never losing trust in Jesus Christ. The believers in the church listened attentively, but at times, the AI-generated avatar inadvertently drew laughter, using platitudes and telling the churchgoers with a deadpan expression that in order “to keep our faith, we must pray and go to church regularly.”
The Pros and Cons of AI in Religion
The use of AI in religion has both opportunities and challenges. Anna Puzio, a researcher on the ethics of technology from the University of Twente in The Netherlands, sees a lot of opportunities in the use of AI in religion, such as making religious services more easily available and inclusive for believers who may not be able to experience their faith in person with others in houses of worship. However, she also notes that there are dangers when it comes to the use of AI in religion. The challenge is that AI is very human-like, and it’s easy to be deceived by it. Also, there is not only one Christian opinion, and AI has to represent various opinions. We have to be careful that AI is not misused for spreading only one opinion. Simmerlein believes that AI can help religious leaders with their everyday work in their congregations. AI can provide inspiration for upcoming sermons or help speed up the process of writing the sermon to make time for other important duties. Simmerlein also believes that artificial intelligence will increasingly take over our lives, and it’s useful to learn to deal with it.
While the experimental church service showed the potential of AI in religion, it also showed the limits of implementing AI in church or religion. There was no real interaction between the believers and the chatbot, which wasn’t able to respond to the laughter or any other reactions by the churchgoers as a human pastor would have been able to do. Some attendees found the service off-putting, lacking heart and soul. Others, however, were impressed by how well it worked, even if it was still a bit bumpy at times. The use of AI in religion is still in its early stages, and there is much to learn about how it can be used to benefit believers and religious leaders. As Simmerlein said, it’s useful to learn to deal with AI as it increasingly takes over our lives in all its facets.
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