“We puttin’ our faith in ChatGPT when we should be putting our faith in G.O.D!”
– Said a Non-Churchy Church Lady

300 people attended a ChatGPT programmed and led service at St. Paul’s Church in Fürth, Germany. The service featured a 40-minute sermon generated by ChatGPT and AI-generated avatars.

Rev. GPT started the service as a bearded man and monotonously greeted the St. Paul’s faithful proclaiming:

Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year’s convention of Protestants in Germany.”

-Rev. GPT

Rev. ChatGPT was immaculately conceived by  Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna. The AI-led service was part of Germany’s biennial Evangelical Church Congress and included thoughts, prayers, and hymns with Rev. GPT officiating. The service was 98 percent ChatGPT’s creation with the remaining 2 percent performed by humans turning on the projectors.

You end up with a pretty solid church service.”

– Jonas Simmerlein

The reverend completed service with mixed reactions from the congregation. Congregants occasionally laughed at the monotonic delivery of some of the avatars and their lack of emotion. A few had a more positive outlook thinking the idea clever and cute.

Simmerlein told the Associated Press that AI reverends and worship leaders can free up more time for human pastors to guide their flock.

Me?

Jumping the Shark

I think it’s ridiculous. We’re quickly approaching the point when AI is going to jump the shark. Like children, we’re throwing every weird and cute idea at AI without even thinking how it’s impacting our humanity. We’re crafting a world where humans are expected to behave like machines because we’ve surrendered so much to the infernal machine.

It amazes me how people love to get their rocks off on things that should be emotional and spiritual including religion and spirituality. Doing this for the sake of doing it, to try something new isn’t clever. It just encourages more misplaced thinking and reliance on computers when we should be doing the human work.

People already have legitimate issues with church and religion. Why turn it into a joke by letting a non-believing, soulless automaton create a mechanically spiritual experience.

Mahalia Jackson is frowning down on us from heaven.

-MJ