This small, unadorned church has long been considered the oldest in the Swiss city of Lucerne. But Peter’s chapel has become synonymous with everything new after an artificial intelligence-powered Jesus capable of conversing in 100 different languages was installed.
“It was really an experiment,” said Marco Schmid, a church theologian. “We wanted to see and understand how people react to an AI Jesus. What would you talk to him about? Would you be interested in talking to him? “We are probably pioneers in this.”
The facility, known as God in Machinalaunched in August as the latest initiative in a years-long collaboration with a local university research lab on immersive reality.
After projects that had experimented with virtual and augmented reality, the church decided the next step was to install an avatar. Schmid said: “We had a discussion about what kind of avatar he would be: a theologian, a person or a saint? But then we realized that the best figure would be Jesus himself.”
Short on space and looking for a place where people could have private conversations with the avatar, the church moved its priest to install a computer and cables in the confessional. After training the AI program on theological texts, visitors were invited to ask questions of an image of Jesus with long hair projected through a lattice screen. It responded in real time, offering answers generated by artificial intelligence.
People were advised not to reveal any personal information and confirm that they knew they were interacting with the avatar at their own risk. “It’s not a confession,” Schmid said. “We are not trying to imitate a confession.”
Over the two-month experiment, more than 1,000 people, including Muslims and visiting tourists from as far away as China and Vietnam, took the opportunity to interact with the avatar.
Although data on the facility will be presented next week, feedback from more than 230 users suggested that two-thirds of them considered it a “spiritual experience,” Schmid said. “So we can say that they had a religiously positive moment with this Jesus AI. “To me, that was surprising.”
Others were more negative, with some telling the church that they found it impossible to talk to a machine. A local journalist who tested the device. described the answers as, at times, “trite, repetitive and exuding a wisdom reminiscent of calendar clichés.”
The feedback suggested there had been a wide disparity in the avatar’s responses, Schmid said. “I get the impression that at times it was really, really good and people were incredibly happy, surprised and inspired,” he said. “And then there were also times when it was somehow not as good, maybe more superficial.”
The experiment also faced criticism from some within the church community, Schmid said, with Catholic colleagues protesting the use of the confessional while Protestant colleagues apparently took offense at the installation’s use of images in this way.
However, what surprised Schmid most was the risk the church had taken by trusting the AI not to give illegal, explicit answers or offer interpretations or spiritual advice that clashed with church teachings.
Hoping to mitigate this risk, the church had conducted testing with 30 people prior to the avatar’s installation. After the launch, it made sure that support was always available for users.
“We never had the impression that he was saying strange things,” says Schmid. “But of course we could never guarantee that he wouldn’t say anything strange.”
Ultimately, it was this uncertainty that led him to decide that the avatar was best left as an experiment. “To put a Jesus like that permanently, I wouldn’t do that. Because the responsibility would be too great.”
However, he was quick to cite the idea’s broader potential. “It’s a really simple and accessible tool in which you can talk about religion, about Christianity, about Christian faith,” he said, reflecting that it could be transformed into a kind of multilingual spiritual guide that could answer religious questions.
For him, the experiment – and the great interest it had generated – had shown him that people sought to go beyond the Bible, the sacraments and the rituals.
Schmid said: “I think there is a thirst to talk to Jesus. People want to have an answer: they want words and to hear what you say. I think that’s an element. Then, of course, there is curiosity. “They want to see what this is.”