Author: DASHA LITVINOVA Associated Press, KOSTYA MANENKOV Associated Press, ABC News
Published on: 08/03/2025 | 06:19:33
AI Summary:
The first church service in Finland put together mostly by AI tools. It drew over 120 people to the church in northeastern Helsinki. People came from out of town as did a handful of foreigners who admitted they didn’t speak Finnish well enough to understand it all. An avatar of “Jesus” on a computer screen in a Catholic chapel in Switzerland took questions from believers and offered responses based on Scripture. St. Paul’s church likes to try new things, with pastors incorporating screenings of soccer and ice hockey matches into their services. Kopperoinen worked for weeks with different AI tools to assemble the 45-minute service, including Open AI’s ChatGPT-4o. ChatGPT refused to give absolution or blessings, Kanala says. Some in the Finnish Lutheran church criticized St. Paul’s for using AI to entertain people at the cost of the environment. Worshippers said they found the service different, interesting and entertaining, but also confusing at times. AI can replace humans only “where the function of the human is purely instrumental” a smile or a brief friendly exchange adds value that AI can’t, he says. In a religious setting, “it’s about the human, not an instrument. They’re not just a means to achieving something,” he adds.
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