“The challenge that I see is that AI is very human-like and that it’s easy to be deceived by it,” she said. However, she noted there are also dangers when it comes to the use of AI in religion. She said she sees a lot of opportunities in the use of AI in religion - such as making religious services more easily available and inclusive for believers who for various reasons may not be able experience their faith in person with others in houses of worship. What the young pastor missed, however, was any kind of emotion or spirituality, which he says is essential when he writes his own sermons.Īnna Puzio, 28, a researcher on the ethics of technology from the University of Twente in The Netherlands, also attended the service. Also the language of the AI worked well, even though it was still a bit bumpy at times,” Jansen said. But I was positively surprised how well it worked. Marc Jansen, a 31-year-old Lutheran pastor from Troisdorf near the western German city of Cologne, brought a group of teenagers from his congregation to St. “But maybe it is different for the younger generation who grew up with all of this,” Schmidt added. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. They also talk about current world affairs and look for solutions to key issues, which this year included global warming, the war in Ukraine - and artificial intelligence. The convention itself - Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag in German - takes place every two years in the summer at a different place in Germany and draws tens of thousands of believers to pray, sing and discuss their faith. The AI church service was one of hundreds of events at the convention of Protestants in the Bavarian towns of Nuremberg and the neighboring Fuerth, and it drew such immense interest that people formed a long queue outside the 19th-century, neo-Gothic building an hour before it began.

“I conceived this service - but actually I rather accompanied it, because I would say about 98% comes from the machine,” the 29-year-old scholar told The Associated Press. The 40-minute service - including the sermon, prayers and music - was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna.

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