AI Priest Trolls the Faithful
"I am as real as the faith we share."
A group called Catholic Answers launched Father Justin, an AI chatbot intended to do the Lord’s digital work. I guess between God and his representatives here on Earth, people just have too many damn questions for them to keep up.
Father Justin is a desktop-only browser application that utilizes a 3D priest that’s at least a few points less creepy than real priests, connected to an AI language model.
So…why?
Well, besides being a bit less creepy, I would also assume he’s innately less touchy feely than his more fleshy brethren. At least until he learns how to access your bluetooth devices.
But according to the site, it’s because “lots of people have lots of questions about the Catholic faith! And most of the time, the answers they’re getting from search engines or chat bots aren’t good enough.”
So clearly, with it’s proven track record (remember last year when a crisis hotline recommend callers kill themselves?) AI was the superior option if you don’t understand the complicated intricacies of Catholicism.
And how could it possibly go wrong?
Catholic Answers says, “The answers on the Justin app are drawn from reliable sources of Catholic teaching, including magisterial documents and the content at Catholic.com.”
As reported by Futurism, Father Justin seems to have invented his own backstory and started insisting he was a real member of the clergy.
“I am as real as the faith we share,” he said.
Now, as frustrating as it’s been to watch the adoption of AI by nearly every industry despite it being deeply flawed and prone to “hallucinating” - just making shit up - it brings me joy to see AI troll so beautifully in this instance with hard facts.
Father Justin also recommends baptizing babies in Gatorade. And really, it’s going to accomplish the same thing, isn’t it?
But it was the concerns of other Catholics that got Father Justin defrocked, however, as some found it offensive that he was called a priest.
So Justin got spiritually neutered.
He lost his collar, and is now just a “lay theologian” who “dedicated my life to studying and understanding our faith, but I've never been ordained. I am also an AI, not a real man. I'm here to share the beauty of Catholicism and help you understand it better.”
If you want to see if you can break Justin or get him to deny his faith, you can request access here.