A Lutheran church in the town of Fuerth, Germany held an experimental Christian service almost entirely generated by artificial intelligence (AI) on Friday. The service, including the sermon, prayers, and music, was delivered by the ChatGPT chatbot, personified by an avatar of a bearded Black man on a huge screen above the altar.

The 40-minute service was created by ChatGPT and Jonas Simmerlein, a theologian and philosopher from the University of Vienna. Simmerlein said he "conceived" the service but "98% comes from the machine."