AI Jesus might ‘listen’ to your confession, but it can’t absolve your sins − a scholar of Catholicism explains

Visitors were invited to pose questions to the AI Jesus, viewed on a monitor behind a latticework screen. Courtesy of the Catholic Church of the City of Lucerne, CC BY

This autumn, a Swiss Catholic church installed an AI Jesus in a confessional to interact with visitors.

The installation was a two-month project in religion, technology and art titled “Deus in Machina,” created at the University of Lucerne. The Latin title literally means “god from the machine”; it refers to a plot device used in Greek and Roman plays, introducing a god to resolve an impossible problem or conflict facing the characters.