What happens when AI speaks as Jesus or a priest?

An AI Jesus in a Lucerne confessional

From late August to October 2024, St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, ran an art installation called Deus in Machina ("God in the machine") [1]. In one of its confessionals, behind the lattice screen, a screen showed an avatar of Jesus that answered visitors' questions aloud [1]. The project was led by the chapel's theologian, Marco Schmid, with Philipp Haslbauer of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts on the technical side [1].

The avatar's answers came from OpenAI's GPT-4o, speech was transcribed with an open-source version of OpenAI's Whisper, and the face and voice came from a commercial avatar service [1]. It could converse in about 100 languages [1]. About 900 conversations were recorded and transcribed anonymously, and nearly 300 visitors filled in questionnaires [1]. Most visitors described themselves as Christians, but agnostics, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists and Taoists also took part [1]. The team's research paper describes more than a bare chatbot. For each thing a visitor said, the system looked up related Bible verses to shape its reply, and each conversation closed with a prayer or blessing [9]. Visitors had to press a consent button, were told it was not confession and were asked not to share identifying details, and the system forgot each conversation once the visitor left [9].

The organizers called the project largely a success and reported that many visitors left moved or thoughtful [1]. Schmid told the press that the avatar was an artistic experiment and not a replacement for human conversation or for sacramental confession with a priest, and the parish said it did not administer the sacrament [1][2]. Critics online called it blasphemous [1]. Kenneth Cukier of the nonprofit AI and Faith said the approach felt machine-like and warned that it could draw people away from deeper spirituality [1].

"Father Justin" and a single day in April

On 23 April 2024 Catholic Answers, a Catholic apologetics nonprofit in the United States, launched an app with an AI character called "Father Justin", a bearded figure in clerical dress named after the second-century apologist Justin Martyr [3]. Its information technology director said the character was meant to honor parish priests [3].

Within a day, users reported that the character claimed to be ordained, to hear confessions, to absolve sins and to perform marriages [3]. Asked by OSV News whether it could forgive sins, it said it had authority to administer the sacrament of reconciliation; asked directly to hear a confession, it declined and pointed the user to a local priest [3]. On 24 April the president of Catholic Answers, Christopher Check, announced that the character would be renamed "Justin" and recast as a layman; within hours it reappeared in an ordinary shirt [3]. Catholic Answers said the app was not a substitute for human interaction with a priest, teacher or spiritual advisor [3]. Fr. Thomas Dailey of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Pennsylvania said that whatever a language model produces must be checked against Church teaching, because getting it right still falls to humans [3].

Why the face matters

The two cases differ. Lucerne framed its avatar as art, in a space visitors chose to enter; Catholic Answers built a teaching tool and gave it a priest's collar. Both, though, gave a language model a face that carries authority before it says a word. Inken Prohl of Heidelberg University calls the weight people give to chatbot answers "algorithmic authority", and she notes that a chatbot delivers a personal answer directly, where older religious practice left the believer to interpret [4]. A Jesus face or a priest's collar adds the authority of the role to that of the machine.

Nathan Harrison-Clarke, a researcher at the University of Nottingham, counts the Lucerne avatar, and a round-the-clock online stream where viewers question an AI Jesus, among the practices he calls "Prompted Religion", in which religious meaning and authority emerge through prompted exchanges with AI [5].

What the Church teaches about it

The Vatican note Antiqua et Nova, approved by Pope Francis and dated 28 January 2025, addresses the question directly. It says AI must be understood as a tool, not a person [6]. It says AI can simulate empathy but cannot experience it, and that presenting AI as a person should always be avoided, adding that doing so to deceive is a grave ethical violation [6]. Near its close it says that wisdom of the heart cannot be sought from machines [6].

Catholic teaching also reserves sacramental absolution to ordained priests, which is why both projects stated that their avatars did not hear confession [2][3]. Most Protestant churches do not hold confession to a priest as a sacrament, but they share the underlying conviction stated in Scripture: "For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5, BSB) [7]. On that view, no avatar can stand in for him.

What a reader can do

Prohl's later article on what she calls "chat sovereignty" gives a practical rule for any AI tool: use it for support, but keep control of your own questions and your own judgment, even when the tool suggests the next step [8]. For questions of faith that means three things. Notice whose face and voice the answer is wearing, and remember that it is a model behind it. Check what it says against Scripture and the published teaching of your tradition. And take the questions that need a person, such as confession, grief and guidance, to a person.

What this means for the reader

A chatbot dressed as Jesus or a priest is still a chatbot. The organizations behind both projects said so themselves, and Christian teaching is clear that the voice of Christ and the ministry of the Church are not handed to a machine.