Catholic Answers receives backlash for its AI priest

Avatar said he could give absolution and preside at weddings before being 'laicized'

Published: May 6, 2024

By Gina Christian
OSV News

This is a screenshot of “Father Justin,” an AI chatbot simulating a priest answering questions for teaching apostolate Catholic Answers. “Father Justin” was “laicized” hours later after the chatbot sparked social media furor. (OSV News screenshot/ Catholic Answers)

Executives from the apologetics nonprofit Catholic Answers told OSV News they remain committed to exploring artificial intelligence after the launch of the group's "Father Justin" AI project sparked intense backlash online — and resulted in the character's swift "laicization" to just "Justin."

"We're no less resolved to make good use of this technology to continue our work of apologetics and evangelization," Christopher Check, president of Catholic Answers, told OSV News. "We regard this (incident) as an opportunity to take some feedback and move forward with it."

Check's team debuted a "Father Justin" interactive AI app April 23, aiming "to provide users with faithful and educational answers to questions about Catholicism," according to an announcement that day by the organization.

The grey-bearded, bushy-browed Father Justin character — named for St. Justin Martyr, a second-century convert and apologist — was intended to be what Catholic Answers information technology director Chris Costello, quoted in the company's April 23 announcement, had called a tribute to parish priests and an "authoritative yet approachable" figure on Catholic teaching.

But Father Justin's preference for addressing users as "my child," and his statements indicating he could actually give absolution and preside at the sacrament of matrimony, drew howls of condemnation in Catholic cyberspace.

By approximately 5 p.m. EDT April 24, Father Justin had fallen silent, gazing with a contemplative air toward a point out of the screen frame — only to re-emerge a few hours later in a button-down shirt as what Catholic Answers called "just 'Justin.'"

Check told OSV News that criticism of the app was down to "a combination" of concern over some of the app's responses, and the AI character itself.

"I think there are some people who simply reacted to a cartoon priest," said Check, adding that "it would be evident to anybody who's looking at it that in fact it's not a real priest."

Check said the move to make the app's face simply "Justin" was a concession to those who found the character "a distraction" that hindered "the purpose of the application, which is to provide sound answers about the Catholic faith."

Check said some users (who had to provide email addresses and cell phone numbers to access the app) "were deliberately trying to trick it ... which is what people like to do with AI or ChatGPT. We discovered while going through the log that one person who finally got (the app) to err (in its responses) in fact has a substantial background in AI."

Costello told OSV News that he and his development team "knew that (the AI app) was going to be controversial.”

"We know there's a lot of concern in the Catholic world about AI in general — how it's used, in fact, in not just the Catholic world, but in the world," he said.

Oblate Father Thomas Dailey, John Cardinal Foley Chair of Homiletics and Social Communications at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Wynnewood, Pa., told OSV News that the "Father Justin" launch, though fraught, has not been without merit.

"The response to what happened shows people's interest in both the technology and its application for faith matters," he said. "That Catholic Answers took all of that feedback and benefited from it or acted on it — and their interest in moving forward to help people — is a compliment to them."

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