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 A.I. 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><\/blockquote>\n
This \u201ctech company Just Like Me\u201d is, according to that report, part of \u201ca faith-based AI gold rush.\u201d But I don\u2019t think there\u2019s gold in them thar hills.<\/p>\n
Yes, there is a market for faith-based grifts like this cross between ELIZA and Miss Cleo, just as there was a market for those little strips of cloth that Robert Tilton sold to his viewers. And while most \u201cA.I.\u201d requires mind-bogglingly expensive data centers and such, I\u2019m guessing the scripted banalities and Forer-effect pablum recited by this \u201cJesus Avatar\u201d are a lot cheaper to produce.<\/p>\n
Miss Cleo\u2019s rates were cheaper. (\u201cMiss Cleo\u201d appeared in ads for the pay-per-call-minute service Psychic Readers Network. Those adds ran all the time on late-night TV in the late \u201990s and early 2000s.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n But even so, this product\/service\/scam still seems to have limited appeal. Most devout believers will view it as borderline blasphemous, while everyone else will have no interest in it at all \u2014 especially not at $120 an hour. (Even Bryon Noem isn\u2019t paying those rates for fantasy chats online.)<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll collect whatever they can from the kind of folks who read Charismanews, but it likely won\u2019t be sustainable or profitable \u2014 even after selling all the data they\u2019ll collect from the rubes. In six months, the \u201cfaith-based tech company\u201d pushing this will either have folded or moved on to its next big idea \u2014 \u201cA.I. Urim and Thummim\u201d or what have you.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Then again, I\u2019d have thought there wasn\u2019t a sustainable market for \u201cprayer apps\u201d either. This is a category of thing that I find confusing \u2014 like those wi-fi enabled toasters. But it turns out \u201cprayer apps\u201d are a thing and enough of a big deal to line up celebrity endorsements.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what caused trouble for \u201cHallow: The #1 Christian prayer app in the world.\u201d Hallow\u2019s celebrity spokespeople include Mark Wahlberg and Chris Pratt and yet, unexpectedly, neither one of those was the celebrity endorsement that created their most recent controversy. Instead, it was this: \u201cPrayer app Hallow faces backlash over Lenten partnership with Tucker Carlson<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
I suppose I\u2019m glad for the backlash over that, but it\u2019s still weird to me that there were, apparently, plenty of Christians whose idea of prayer involves thinking \u201cI wish I had something on my phone that enabled me to pray like Mark Wahlberg, but not so much like Tucker Carlson.\u201d<\/p>\n
I suppose there is<\/em> a line you could draw in between those two \u2014 Carlson wasn\u2019t surprisingly good in Three Kings<\/em> or The Departed<\/em> \u2014 but I still find this whole thing odd.<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u201cThe use of A.I. in proclamation evangelism<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is like those old Reeses Peanut Butter Cup commercials, except instead of two great tastes that taste great together it\u2019s about two Bad Ideas combined to create one Even Worse Idea.<\/p>\n
Happily, Gretchen Huizinga\u2019s article is mostly skeptical about any purported benefits from A.I. making \u201cproclamation evangelism\u201d more efficient: \u201cIn an increasingly artificial and disembodied world, it is the authentic and embodied human that brings the tangible love of Christ to the lost and lonely.\u201d Less happily, she\u2019s generally less skeptical about the artificial and disembodied, intangible marketing known as \u201cproclamation evangelism.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book of James says \u201cIf a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, \u2018Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,\u2019 and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?\u201d It would surely be worse<\/em> if instead you had an \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d program designed to say to them \u201cGo in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,\u201d but just because that would be worse doesn\u2019t make the thing James describes good<\/em>.<\/p>\n
\u2022 This is a solid report from Inae Oh about Pope Leo\u2019s calm, peaceable response to Trump\u2019s weird recent rants against him: \u201cPope Leo: \u2018I Have No Fear\u2019 of Trump<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n
I do have one quibble with the final sentence here, thought:<\/p>\n
Though Leo has generally avoided mentioning Trump by name, the pope has been increasingly vocal in his criticism of Trump\u2019s war in Iran, telling reporters as recently as last week that the president\u2019s threat to destroy \u201ca whole civilization\u201d was \u201ctruly unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a late March sermon widely viewed as a rebuke of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u2019s framing of the war as divinely sanctioned, Leo condemned leaders who have \u201chands full of blood.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That last comment created a huge stir among MAGA evangelicals, who were livid with the pope for suggesting that God does not listen to the prayers of those whose hands are full of blood. Franklin Graham was apoplectic with Leo for saying this.<\/p>\n
But of course Leo didn\u2019t say it. He quoted it. From Isaiah. And, if you believe Isaiah, then he wasn\u2019t the one who said it either because, the prophet Isaiah said, this was God speaking: \u201d Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s Isaiah 1:15. Chapter<\/a> and verse<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It is hilariously revealing that the \u201cbiblicistic\u201d B-I-B-L-E, sola scriptura,<\/em> inerrantist, literalist, etc., evangelicals like Graham didn\u2019t recognize the words of scripture and attacked them as \u201cwoke\u201d ideology. But it\u2019s not surprising.<\/p>\n
This is, after all, just exactly how white \u201cBible Christians\u201d reacted when Frederick Douglass preached a long sermon drawing heavily on this same chapter of Isaiah. They were horrified by \u201cWhat to the Slave Is Your Fourth of July?<\/a>\u201d and attacked it as anti-religious.<\/p>\n
Of course, in a sense I suppose that was true since, again, Douglass was drawing on Isaiah 1, and God, in that chapter, is vehemently anti-religious.<\/p>\n
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