- He controlled 4 avatars and wrote a sermon
- Parishioners had mixed reactions to such a service
- Many believe that the AI lacked spirituality
ChatGPT held a mass for the faithful of a German Lutheran church. It took 40 minutes and provoked strong emotions among the faithful as well as the clergy.
The mass was an experiment conducted with the consent of Jonas Zimmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.. He prepared a 40-minute sermon generated by ChatGPT, D-ID, and VoiceAI chatbots.
The service itself was led by four avatars who addressed the faithful with content organized by ChatGPT. Mass was held at St. Paul’s Church in the Bavarian city of Fürth. And it was attended by more than 300 parishioners.
The visitors had extremely mixed impressions about the AI Mass.. The main complaint is the monotony and crudity of the avatars. Some people also said that there was “no heart or soul” in AI’s prayers. Lack of emotion was one of the most common complaints.
Some, however, were happy with the result.. Young pastor Mark Jansen admitted in an interview with Business Insider that the mass generated by AI made a big impression on him. He was expecting something much worse.
But the Germans are not the first to use neural networks for religious experiments. Such an idea has already been implemented in 2019 by Buddhist monks from the Kodaji Shrine in Kyoto. They developed Kannon Mindar, an android created in the image of one of the main deities of the Buddhist pantheon.