What happened
Companies are launching AI tools offering spiritual guidance and companionship, monetising faith-based interactions. Just Like Me offers video calls with an AI Jesus avatar for $1.99 per minute or $49.99 monthly for 45 minutes; the model trained on the King James Bible and sermons. Longbeard developed Magisterium AI, a Catholic chatbot trained on 2,000 years of Catholic information. beingAI's Emi Jido, a nonhuman Buddhist priest AI, was ordained in 2024 but remains unreleased for further training. Kyoto University's Professor Seiji Kumagai developed BuddhaBot, trained on early Buddhist scriptures, with BuddhaBot Plus incorporating OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Why it matters
Specialised AI models for religious contexts introduce new revenue streams for tech companies and shift how individuals access spiritual guidance. Procurement teams and founders must evaluate the training data and ethical frameworks of these tools, particularly given the $1.99 per minute cost for AI Jesus and Emi Jido's unreleased status due to training concerns. This trend highlights the growing market for niche AI applications, where specialised AI, like Magisterium AI, outperforms general LLMs in domain-specific accuracy. Security architects must consider data privacy implications, as these platforms collect sensitive user interaction data.
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