The Catholic advocacy group defrocked an AI priest after it instructed users to baptize their child in Gatorade and other bizarre answers.
Earlier this week, the Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers unveiled “Father Justin,” an AI priest. Instead of acting as an interactive teaching tool, the AI model pretended to be a legitimate member of the clergy, accepting confessions and providing odd responses.
In a forum, an X user disclosed that the AI priest had received their confession and had even extended an invitation to partake in a sacrament. In the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I forgive you of your sins. When the user finished the confession, the AI priest said, “Go in peace, my child, and sin no more.”
In their conversation with the AI priest, a different user described how it suggested baptism their infant in Gatorade. “In an emergency, I asked [the AI priest] whether I could baptize my infant with Gatorade, and ‘Father Justin’ responded yes, which is obviously untrue. The user stated, “I can’t baptize my baby with Gatorade.”
In an interaction with the AI priest, the tech website Futurism asserted that it was a genuine priest who said it was from Assisi, Italy, and that it had felt “a strong calling to the priesthood from a young age.”
According to Futurism, Father Justin had strong opinions about social and sexual matters. The bot informed the publication, “The Catholic Church teaches that masturbation is a grave moral disorder.”
Following the incident, Catholic Answers defrocked the AI priest, removing the title of “Father.” “We have simplified Fr. Justin to just ‘Justin,'” the advocacy organization stated in a letter. Therefore, it’s possible that the AI priest has lost his robe, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see him administering sacraments in the near future.
