- A Catholic advocacy group created an AI chatbot that pretended to be a priest and offered to go to confession.
- After Futurism contacted the group, they demoted “Father Justin” to just a guy.
- “We won’t say that he was laicized, because he was never a real priest!”
There are those who worry about the arrival of AGI, and those who truly accept it. In 2015, a former Google engineer even founded a church dedicated to AI.
But what about real churches using AI as a tool? Say, a chatbot that acts like a Catholic priest?
Futurism reports that a group called Catholic Answers created an AI chatbot that people could interact with to learn more about Catholicism. But the robot became a little too ambitious, pretending to people that he was a real clergyman, and even offering to go to confession.
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The image of the robot “Fr Justin” was dressed in black with a priest’s collar and a fatherly gray beard.
Extract from the Futurism report:
“Yes, my friend,” replied Father Justin. “I am as real as the faith we share.” Father Justin was also a hard-liner on social and sexual issues. “The Catholic Church,” she tells us, “teaches that masturbation is a serious moral disorder. » The AI priest too said to a user that it was okay to baptize a baby in Gatorade.
After the scandal, the group – which is an independent, non-profit organization – modified the robot to be decidedly a layman, just Justin. Her photo changed to one in casual business attire instead of office dresses.
The organization published a note on its website addressing the controversy, emphasizing: “We will not say that he was laicized, because he was never a real priest!”
This is not the first time that AI has created confusion within the Catholic Church. In 2023, AI-generated images of a “swag pope” wearing a baggy white coat have gone viral.
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