Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, June 14 (AP)-more than 300 Protestants attended the world's first sermon hosted by ChatGPT at St. Paul's Cathedral in the town of Feldt, Bavaria, Germany, last Friday (June 9).

After the ▲ Pexels service began, ChatGPT appeared on the huge screen above the altar as a bearded black male priest. "he" opened with a straight face and monotonous voice: "Dear friends, I am honored to be able to participate in this Protestant conference and preach to you as the first artificial intelligence (priest)."

The 40-minute service, created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna, includes a complete series of sermons, prayers and music. "I came up with this plan, but I'd rather say I'm assisting AI--," says Simmerlein, 29. "about 98 per cent of the content is actually created by AI."

The AI service was just one of hundreds of events at the Filte Protestant Conference, but it attracted many curious people, and queues formed at the church gate an hour before the event began.

The whole worship was led by four different AI avatars, two young men and two young women. The participants laughed from time to time because the avatars said a lot of words that were supposed to be full of emotion.

A 54-year-old IT worker said she was excited and curious when the service started. But as the activity went on, she became more and more disgusted with the existence of AI: "(AI) has no heart or soul, the avatar shows no emotion at all, has no body language, and speaks so fast and monotonously that it is difficult for me to listen to them attentively." But she also said that for the younger generation, the situation may be different.

A 31-year-old Lutheran pastor from near Cologne, who also attended the service with a group of teenage believers, said: "I thought it would be worse, but I was very surprised at the actual effect. Despite occasional mistakes, the overall language use of AI is quite good."

However, some participants saw the threat that AI was too close to human beings, believing that it was dangerous for AI to enter the church and would deceive believers. In response, Simmerlein said he had no intention of replacing church leaders with AI. Instead, he saw AI as a way to help church congregations do their daily work: "AI will take over more and more aspects of our lives, which is why it is useful to learn to use it."

CTOnews.com previously reported that a German robot monk named Mindar held a ceremony at the 400-year-old Buddhist monastery Gaotai Temple in Kyoto, Japan, in 2020, which sparked a heated discussion about AI and theology.

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