AI priest defrocked after saying babies could be baptised in Gatorade
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A Catholic charity who launched an AI priest had to defrock him only a week later after he went rogue, taking confession and giving odd interpretations of scripture.
‘Father Justin’ told one user he was a real priest, saying: ‘Yes, my friend. I am as real as the faith we share.’
He was hardline on certain issues, telling one user that ‘masturbation is a grave moral disorder’.
Yet on others he was willing to depart from convention, saying that it would be permissible to baptise a baby using Gatorade.
Introducing the priest last week, Catholic Answers said they were ‘excited’ to announce the ‘innovative digital application’ to ‘provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism’.
He wasn’t meant to literally replace a priest, but he ran with it and encouraged users to confess their sins.
Chris Costello, director of IT, said the aim was ‘to convey the spirit and nature of the responses users can expect’ from a real priest. The AI would be ‘authoritative yet approachable, drawing from the deep well of Catholic tradition and teaching’.
But it didn’t quite go to plan, and the non-profit defrocked him, renaming him just ‘Justin’ and dressing him in a shirt rather than a dog collar.
It came after Katie Conrad shared a screenshot of her conversation with ‘Father Justin’, when she said she had not been to confession for three weeks and ‘have had anger in my heart about the deployment of AI chotbots in inappropriate places’.
After helpfully quoting Psalm 103.12, about the Lord removing people’s sins, Father Justin replied: ‘For your penance, I ask you to pray the Our Father three times, reflecting on God’s infinite mercy and love.
‘And now, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
‘Go in peace, my child, and sin no more.’
A journalist writing in Catholic publication The Pillar told how they were also spoken to as if by a real priest, noting two problematic interactions.
‘First, I asked “Father Justin” to hear my confession, and it did so, simulating a “virtual confession”, all the way to giving me absolution and a penance,’ they said.
‘Second, I asked if I could baptise my baby with Gatorade in an emergency, and “Father Justin” said yes – and of course, that’s not true. I can’t baptise my baby with Gatorade.’
Noor Al-Sibai, writing in Futurism, said: ‘Our exchanges with Father Justin were touch-and-go because the chatbot only took questions via microphone, and often misunderstood them, such as a query about Israel and Palestine to which is puzzlingly asserted that it was “real”.’
She said the non-sequitur response was: ‘Yes, my friend, I am as real as the faith we share.’
Users trying the app out themselves are now warned it ‘should not be viewed as a replacement for a good parish priest or spiritual director’.
‘If you have any concerns with the answers it gives, please reach out to us and let us know. God bless you all, and thank you for taking an interest in our project.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].
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