Artificial Intelligence has stepped inside the House of God—not as a worshipper but as a preacher leading hundreds of people in a religious sermon. The St. Paul's church in the Bavarian town of Fürth in Germany witnessed history being written with 300 more people being part of this defining moment. But we're unsure if it's celebratory or catastrophic. 

On Friday, June 9, 2023, ChatGPT conducted a sermon, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man. A large screen was placed above the altar through which the AI preached to the worshippers who showed up. It was an experimental Lutheran church service almost entirely generated by AI. The Chatbot avatar commenced the sermon with a [predictable] deadpan face and monotonous voice, "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," as reported by Fox2Now.

An hour before the service commenced, worshippers stood outside the 19th-century, neo-Gothic building in a long queue to have a first-hand experience of how AI can preach. The 40-minute-long service led by the chatbot focused on themes like letting go of the past, being mindful of the present, embracing life's mortal nature and having faith in Jesus Christ. All these sermons, music and prayers were created by ChatGPT. A theologian and philosopher, Jonas Simmerlein from the University of Vienna directed the whole concept. Simmerlein explained to the Associated Press, "I conceived this service—but, actually, I rather accompanied it because I would say about 98% comes from the machine." 

This sermon was part of  Deutscher Evangelischer Kirchentag, a biennial event, highly renowned in Fürth and attracts thousands of devout Christians. A number of issues are discussed and for this year, they picked topics like climate change, the Ukranian war and AI. "Now is the time" was one of the slogans for this year so Simmelein fed the chatbot with it and the AI-generated tool delivered the sermon along the lines of this slogan. The 29-year-old theologian added, "I told the artificial intelligence 'We are at the church congress, you are a preacher… what would a church service look like?'" 

He also asked for prayers and blessings at the end including Psalms in the sermon. "You end up with a pretty solid church service," he explained further. Twitterati had a meltdown at the news. A Twitter user, @MickamiousG said, "AI is a long way from replacing things (such as) this...however, it is not far off from infiltrating and becoming self-aware." Another user, @Jenartist1 was in disbelief, saying, "You have got to be kidding me." A third, @cillionaire_com criticized, "NO. Religion is deeply rooted in human emotions and beliefs, making the human sense of spirituality and connection vital to its practice and understanding." Makes sense. 

Four avatars hosted the sermon—two were men and two were women. However, Heiderose Schmidt, a 54-year-old IT professional, criticized it and said, "There was no heart or soul; the avatars displayed no emotions, had no body language and spoke so rapidly and monotonously that it was challenging for me to concentrate on their words." At times, the AI-generated avatar also ended up drawing laughter, especially when it used platitudes and told the churchgoers that in order “to keep our faith, we must pray and go to church regularly.”