Jesus chatbots aren’t the only AI technologies seeping into religious practice. Some worshippers don’t agree with the use of them.
The canonization of Carlo Acutis by Pope Leo XIV on 7 September was a sign of how the Catholic Church is increasingly embracing the digital world.
Acutis, who died of leukaemia in 2006 at the age of 15, was known for using the Internet to further his faith, maintaining a website documenting Eucharistic miracles recognized by the church. It earned him the moniker God’s influencer.
But the work of a saintly teenage tech-wizard is just one way that new technologies are finding their way into religious practice: artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots and ritual-performing robots are already taking on spiritual roles that are conventionally filled by humans. Worshippers have mixed feelings about them. Read more in Nature.