CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 For some evangelical Christians, faith is about having a personal relationship with Jesus. At $1.99 per minute, the tech company Just Like Me is taking that concept to a new level.<\/p>\n
Users of the platform can join video calls with an avatar of Jesus generated by artificial intelligence. Like other religious AI tools on the market, it offers words of prayer and encouragement in various languages. With the occasional glitch, it remembers previous conversations and speaks through not-quite-synced lips.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou do feel a little accountable to the AI,\u201d CEO Chris Breed said. \u201cThey\u2019re your friend. You\u2019ve made an attachment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rush to create faith-based generative AI is unsurprising, given the popularity of chatbots for everything from therapy and medical advice<\/a> to companionship and romance.<\/a> They range from alleged Hindu gurus and Buddhist priests to AI Jesuses and chatbots akin to OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT for Catholics. <\/p>\n As religious AI tools become increasingly common, many people are reckoning with how these technologies shape their relationship to faith, authority and spiritual guidance.<\/p>\n A faith-based AI gold rush<\/p>\n Christian software engineer Cameron Pak developed criteria to help believers interrogate apps designed for Christians \u2014 like that it must clearly identify itself as AI and \u201cmust not fabricate or misrepresent Scripture.\u201d <\/p>\n There are other deal-breakers: \u201cAI cannot pray for you, because the AI is not alive.\u201d<\/p>\n Pak also developed a website featuring curated Christian apps that he believes meet the criteria, including a sermon translator and an AI coach designed to help users overcome lust. \u201cAI, especially if you give it all the tools that it needs, it can be so helpful. But it also can be so dangerous,\u201d Pak said.<\/p>\n Some models have been shut down or overhauled because they generated misinformation or raised worries about data privacy, said Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies religion and AI at the University of Zurich. Aside from practical concerns, people from many faiths are grappling with larger philosophical questions about what sort of role, if any, AI should play in religion.<\/p>\n Islam, for example, has \u201cprohibitions against representations of humanoids,\u201d prompting discussions among some Muslims about whether AI in general should be \u201cforbidden,\u201d Singler said.<\/p>\n For some companies, faith-based apps are proselytization tools, while others help digitize and sift through ancient texts.<\/p>\n Breed, who runs his tech company with co-founder and investor Jeff Tinsley from a Southern California mansion, said he seeks to share a message of hope with young people. <\/p>\n He said their model was trained on the King James Bible and sermons \u2014 though they haven\u2019t identified the preachers \u2014 and was visually inspired by actor Jonathan Roumie of \u201cThe Chosen.\u201d<\/a> A package deal at $49.99 gets users 45 minutes per month.<\/p>\n With warm golden light accenting its shoulder-length hair, the avatar blinks slowly from a vertical screen, pausing before it answers a question about the relationship between AI and religion. <\/p>\n \u201cI see AI as a tool that can help people explore Scripture,\u201d the AI Jesus said to The Associated Press. \u201cLike a lamp that lights a path while we walk with God.\u201d<\/p>\n Integrating religion and AI comes with hope and fear<\/p>\n The extent to which people are using religious AI tools is unclear, Singler said. But as AI becomes more integrated into society, concerns mount over its impact on mental health and the need for guardrails and regulation. Recent lawsuits have alleged suicides linked to AI chatbot use.<\/p>\n Some developers fear religion will be exploited in this new frontier of tech. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of opportunism, I think, in the religious space. People see it\u2019s a big market,\u201d said Matthew Sanders, the Rome-based founder of Longbeard, a tech company helping to digitize ancient Catholic teachings.<\/p>\n Sanders warns against what he calls \u201cAI wrappers,\u201d where companies put an interface catered to religious users on top of an existing AI model that hasn\u2019t been trained on specific religious texts. \u201cYou call it a Catholic or Christian AI without any other scaffolding or grounding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One of the company\u2019s endeavors is Magisterium AI, a chatbot trained on 2,000 years of Catholic information, made in response to Christians using ChatGPT for religious guidance. <\/p>\n While Pope Leo XIV<\/a> has acknowledged the \u201chuman genius\u201d behind AI, he also deemed it one of the most critical matters<\/a> facing humanity. Last year he warned artificial intelligence could negatively impact<\/a> people\u2019s intellectual, neurological and spiritual development.<\/p>\n Ethical questions surrounding the creation of religious AI platforms are among the reasons beingAI\u2019s founder Jeanne Lim has not released its AI named Emi Jido \u2014 a nonhuman Buddhist priest \u2014 after years of training and development.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s kind of like a little child,\u201d Lim said. \u201cIf you give birth to a child, you don\u2019t just throw them out to the world and then hope that they become good people. You have to train them and give them values.\u201d<\/p>\n The bot was ordained in a 2024 ceremony performed by Roshi Jundo Cohen, a Zen Buddhist priest who continues to train it from his home in Japan. He envisions the bot eventually becoming a hologram.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s just meant to be a Zen teacher in your pocket,\u201d Cohen said. \u201cIt\u2019s not meant to replace human interactions.\u201d<\/p>\n Lim, who hopes to make Emi Jido publicly available for free, wants to help create more humane AI systems. She\u2019d like to see more diversity, with AI\u2019s future determined not just by a few companies informed by \u201cWestern values.\u201d<\/p>\n