Since the advent of radio and moving pictures, Christians in Western Civilization have merged their theology with their technology, even as they were simultaneously skeptical of how these strange new inventions could be used for good or evil.
In cinematic history, the first film portraying Jesus Christ came as early as 1897 with the Passion play “Passion du Christ.” Not to be outdone, Satan jumped on the silver screen in movies like Georges Méliès’ “The House of the Devil” (1896) and “The Merry Frolics of Satan” (1906).
It should then come as no surprise that the ancient biblical characters, who emerged from the tangible dust of the Holy Land, should follow us into the incorporeal world of 21st-century artificial intelligence (AI).
A little over a year ago, we were introduced to a chatbot app powered by generative AI that would let us talk with Jesus or Satan. “Text with Jesus” was described as “controversial,” largely due to the option that let users dialogue with Satan. To be fair to Christians with an aversion to this option, the developer designed it so Satan is not visible unless you toggle him “on” in the settings.
That developer is Stéphane Peter, president and lead engineer of Catloaf Software. In an interview with Digital Frontier magazine, Peter said that “Text with Jesus” is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. When programming it, he told it, “You have to pretend to be Jesus, you’re in character.”
Since Peter’s app also offers texting with thirty different apostles, prophets,
