ChatGPT: An Unlikely Host for a Christian Sermon

An AI chatbot created by OpenAI’s ChatGPT-3 language model has been used to deliver a Christian sermon at the 38th German Protestant Kirchentag bi-annual religious convention hosted in Nuremberg, Germany. The 40-minute service was attended by over 300 parishioners who were curious about whether AI could provide religious succour. The University of Sienna protestant theologian, Jonas Simmerlein, said he instructed ChatGPT to act as a preacher and create a sermon that included psalms, prayers, and a blessing at the end. The AI’s output was called pretty solid as a church service. The sermon included four AI avatars reading from a script created by the ChatGPT, with the avatars telling the congregation to leave the past behind and focus on the present. There was laughter at times when one avatar told the audience they should pray and go to church regularly to maintain their faith. Gizmodo asked Simmerlein what programs he used to create the AI avatars, but there was no immediate response. Some of the audience found the event interesting but uncomfortable, while others found the joining of AI and religion gross.