SUBSCRIBER WOW: MY DINNER WITH AI JESUS

Tech Bros Reinvent Jesus; What Could Go Wrong?

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

Last week a number of outlets released stories about the flurry of supposedly AI Jesus chat bots making their way into circulation, each inviting invites you to have a conversation with the AI version of Our Lord and Savior and sometimes his friends.

(I say supposedly because I’m not really sure that almost anything that is being called AI today is actually AI in the sense of learning as it goes. I think they’re much more likely to be bots who offer a large but still finite number of responses.)

Always your dutiful servant, I decided to investigate as many of them as I could find/tolerate without my brain melting, including Text Jesus, Talk To Jesus, Chat Jesus, and Call Jesus. Yes, that’s right, you can actually call Jesus. He looks like a Mediterranean Fabio, sounds like a 30-something from the mid-Atlantic, and answers every question by affirming you and then turning whatever you talk about into a simile. Literally, every time.

Obviously, these bots are pretty terrible, though in a myriad of different ways. Probably my favorite bad experience came from Text Jesus, which allows you to chat with many different figures from Scripture, including Satan, if you pay for it—which seems fitting, I guess, and also an indication of the quality of its creators.

Unlike most of the apps, Text Jesus only lets you text five things before you have to start paying. Jesus’ robes ain’t cheap, y’all. And if you are on the free version of the app, you also get the amazing experience of having hyperactive internet 2.0 ads pop up after every question. “I’m having a hard time right now,” I typed.

Here’s what the app responded.

As we all know, when you’re having a really hard time, the things you need are a) time on Facebook; and b) pop up ads.

“I’m gay”, I typed soon after. It responded with an Amazon ad.

But I’ll tell you something: As hacky as they are, I genuinely learned a couple things from these bots, about them and about me. And not all of it is bad.