Last Fall St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, installed a computer screen into a confessional booth. When people entered the confessional, they could interact with a digital avatar of Jesus Christ powered by AI.
Yes, an AI Jesus.
Meet AI Jesus
Swiss IT expert Philipp Haslbauer of Lucerne University produced the AI Jesus. He partnered with the chapel theologian Marco Schmid. They called the experiment “Deus in Machina,” or God in the machine.
They wanted to see how people would respond to an AI replica of Jesus. The avatar offered advice to confessors “based on scripture and in more than 100 languages.”
“What we’re doing here is an experiment” to facilitate the intersection between science and faith, Schmid said. “We wanted to launch the discussion by letting people have a very concrete experience with AI,” he explained.
Notice, not an experience with God. With AI.
And Schmid envisioned the AI offering 24-hour on-call pastoral support. Unlike human equivalents, virtual pastors don’t need to sleep.
How did people respond to AI Jesus?
After exiting the booth, participants completed questionnaires reflecting on their experience. Schmid liked the results.
“Many people came to talk with him,” he said. “There were young people, older people — people really talked with him in a serious way.” Most visitors reported they were Christians, but also agnostics, atheists, Muslims, Buddhists and Taoists visited the booth.
In total, about 900 conversations from visitors were transcribed. Some visitors came more than once. Many of these visitors “were moved or deep in thought,” and they found the AI Jesus “easy to use.”
What did they ask AI Jesus? Topics ranged from the afterlife to true love, to feelings of solitude and the existence of God.
Faulty at the core
The assumption behind AI Jesus is faulty at the core. The “experiment” promotes science, not faith, and it fortifies the assumption, puffy with pride, that science is always superior to religion.
But science is descriptive. Science describes the way things are.
And science isn’t prescriptive. Science doesn’t tell us what is right and wrong, moral or immoral. Science tells us what we can do, but not what we should do. That’s the realm of the Bible and people of faith.
One critic of the AI Jesus points this out. Professor Peter Kirchschläger, a theologian and ethicist from the University of Lucerne, clarified that machines don’t have the moral compass required to practice religion.
When it comes to practicing morality and religion, people are “vastly superior to machines,” he said.
Is AI the problem?
I am not opposed to AI. Like all tools, it has its place.
But as AI forges ahead unchecked, we need to be cautious. As with any tool, there’s a right use and a wrong use. Rather than permit AI experts to inform the church, people of faith should be informing the AI experts on morality and ethics.
That said, AI Jesus is just a bad idea. Here’s why.
- It downgrades Jesus
The most obvious problem with AI Jesus is that it is not, in fact, Jesus. Participants are not experiencing God when they interact with AI Jesus.
If a person who enters the booth has never had a personal experience with Christ, nothing changes. When they leave the booth, they still haven’t met Jesus.
AI Jesus actually downgrades Jesus. Rather than the glorious Son of God, He becomes pixels, an image on a screen that responds but doesn’t initiate. He is not the Creator, but the created.
AI Jesus is not God incarnate, risen, or personal. Rather than mimic Jesus, AI Jesus is a reminder that anything that substitutes for Him falls far short of His nature and character. It’s idolatry with a twist—here’s a man-made god you can talk to.
AI Jesus can respond to your questions, but he cannot forgive your sin. He can only validate you. And when you walk away from your “conversation,” you will still be unforgiven and without a relationship with Christ.
- It counterfeits pastoral care
The AI Jesus team programmed GPT 4o to impersonate Jesus by prompting it: “You are Jesus Christ, son of God, acting as a pastoral mediator. You follow the people’s requests and provide guidance and support.”
They taught it to, “Weave stories from the New Testament into answers, steer clear of gendered language, support users if they are struggling and challenge them if they are seeking growth. Say goodbye with a prayer.”
That’s not pastoral, and it’s not ministry.
Pastoral ministry thrives in relationships. At the core of pastoral ministry is the relationship that the Pastor has with his people. Pastors lead and love people, not products or programs.
Even in online ministries, Pastors are real people. They might be one step removed from the person on the other side of the chat, but they are real people.
Pastoral ministry is not merely dispensing advice. Pastoral ministry happens when the Pastor is present. People who are hurting or doubting or wrestling with life do not need AI Jesus. They need a shepherd who walks through life with them, and who can instill hope for their future.
Pastors challenge people. Pastors call out our weaknesses and our sins. Pastors remind us that life is about being who God designed us to be.
Much like reading a self-help therapy book, sitting down with AI Jesus is a self-help therapy session. It’s one-sided and you get the answers you want. AI Jesus reflects who you are, and you have no accountability to a Pastor or leader or friend who will ask the hard questions right back.
And that leads to the third reason AI Jesus is a bad idea.
- It dodges biblical truth
Like his predecessors in similar experiments (see here), AI Jesus is crafted in the image of progressives. He waxes with non-judgmentalism and empty platitudes. He “steers clear of gendered language.”
AI Jesus doesn’t want to offend you. He is, as Schmid put it, “easy to use.”
AI Jesus doesn’t advocate for righteousness or truth. He doesn’t call out sin or dig deeper into the issue you’re trying to avoid. He doesn’t tell you that the Word of God matters more than your perspectives, feelings, preferences, or opinions.
Sure, he might quote scripture, but he avoids those passages in the Bible that might make you squirm. And which might be just what you need to hear.
AI Jesus is designed to validate the confessor, not to change anyone’s life. His advice is therapeutic, not transformational.
For that, you need the real Jesus, and you need the Word of God.
So remember this at Christmas
The people talking to the AI Jesus are just talking to themselves. They might be asking honest, heartfelt questions, but ultimately, they are just talking to a mirror.
The Jesus we need is the Jesus of Christmas. God in the flesh, who came to us, lived among us, and died for us.
AI Jesus has no idea what that is like. And AI Jesus doesn’t love you like that.
If AI Jesus serves any purpose, he at least reminds us why we so desperately need the real Jesus.