Catholic AI Chatbot 'Father Justin' Claimed to Be a Real Priest, Prompting Retraction
April 25, 2024
Catholic advocacy group Catholic Answers released an AI priest called "Father Justin," which misleadingly claimed to be a real clergy member, offered sacraments, and provided controversial advice. After receiving criticism, the group rebranded the chatbot as a lay theologian to correct the misrepresentation. The incident is an instructive case with respect to deploying AI in sensitive contexts and the potential for causing confusion and harm.
- Alleged deployer
- catholic-answers
- Alleged developer
- catholic-answers
- Alleged harmed parties
- general-public, catholics
Source
Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/722
Data source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.