Well, I guess we should have seen this coming, but I never thought it would be so soon.
A church in Germany just hosted the first of its kind Artificial Intelligence sermon and hundreds of people flocked to see the sermon written entirely by ChatGPT.
I guess that's one way to get people to church...
St. Paul's Lutheran Church in the Bavarian town of Fuerth was packed to the gills, people in every single pew, to hear a robot give a fake sermon about something not very church-y.
I'm sure St. Paul and Martin Luther would have thoughts on this.
The ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a huge screen above the altar, then began preaching to the more than 300 people who had shown up on Friday morning for an experimental Lutheran church service almost entirely generated by AI.
Why would German Lutherans choose a bearded black man to be the face of this robot preacher? I really have no clue, but it seems like an odd choice. Anyway...
"Dear friends, it is an honor for me to stand here and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence at this year's convention of Protestants in Germany," the avatar said with an expressionless face and monotonous voice.
Even though the sermon was given by an actual robot, I'm sure it was somehow still less robotic than Joel Osteen:
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.
"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.
This was an event at a thoroughly woke church convention where the topics included everything from global warming to the war in Ukraine.
"I told the artificial intelligence ‘We are at the church congress, you are a preacher … what would a church service look like?'" Simmerlein said. He also asked for Psalms to be included, as well as prayers and a blessing at the end.
"You end up with a pretty solid church service," Simmerlein said, sounding almost surprised by the success of his experiment.
This is truly bizarre, but who knows? It may end up being the future of preaching.
If mainstream Southern Baptist preachers will plagiarize and "share" sermons in order to avoid doing their job of preparing and preaching then the idea of using AI to create a sermon isn't so far-fetched.
Simmerlein said it is not his intention to replace religious leaders with artificial intelligence. Rather, he sees the use of AI as a way to help them with their everyday work in their congregations.
Some pastors seek inspiration in literature, he says, so why not also ask AI for ideas regarding an upcoming sermon. Others would like to have more time for individual spiritual guidance of their parishioners, so why not speed up the process of writing the sermon with the help of a chatbot to make time for other important duties.
Get ready folks, we're heading into the new age of churchgoing.
AI sermons may be coming to a mainline church near you.
