We all knew this was coming, as sure as God made little green idiots. Nonetheless, it poses an ethics conundrum. Several, in fact.
First, though: “What’s going on here?” What’s going on is that once again, someone has figured out a way to profit from human desperation, sadness, and gullibility, or, as P.T. Barnum once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” P.T. was being conservative in his estimate.
For just $1.99 per minute, or $49.99 for 45 minutes (what a deal!) anyone can have a spiritual conversation with a digital avatar of Jesus Christ, whose appearance is modeled on actor Jonathon Roumie’s portrayal on the TV show “The Chosen.” This courtesy of the Just Like Me website, which explains, “Jesus AI is an artificial intelligence tool designed to offer comfort, encouragement, and timeless wisdom inspired by teachings of love, compassion, forgiveness, and personal growth. It is not Jesus Christ himself, nor does it possess divine authority.”
We can cross off dishonesty from the list of possible ethics breaches, I guess. But historians and anthropologists believe that Jesus probably looked like this…
I still have questions, however.
Ethics Alarms 
Unethical. I’m not religious, but I feel it’s blasphemy. Based on my limited understanding of it all, my instinct is telling me the following:
The role of a priest, bishop, cardinal, pastor, deacon, reverend, and other Christian faith leaders has been to guide people along the teachings of Jesus based on what has been documented and learned. This AI bot is no different from those roles – it would have to rely on the same materials and has the same goal – to guide the user to understanding the teachings of Jesus.
But they didn’t make it an “AI Priest” etc. They made it the man itself so rather than guiding and interpretting the existing knowledge, it’s putting words in the mouth and inventing new teachings of Jesus.
Disclaimer all they want. It’s unethical.
Unethical for anything to represent another person without consent?
What’s next, an AI of the Prophet of the religion of peace?
An “AI Mohammed” which showed the Prophet’s face would be considered sacrilegious by Muslims, and would probably earn its creator a fatwa of some sort. There would at least have to be a full-face veil on the AI Prophet (as he has been depicted in Persian art, I believe); otherwise, one would be safer creating an AI “Ask the Mullah”, with the AI mullah quoting the Koran.Catholics (even bad Catholics) shouldn’t need an “AI Jesus” at all, as any priest whom they might seek counseling from during Confession would be bound by the “seal of the confessional” never to reveal what a penitent has told him during Confession. I would share @Ryan Harkins’ concern about the denominational & ideological slant of an “AI Jesus”, and I would want to see some kind of “about the creator” disclosure regarding this. I would also agree with EA and previous commenters that an AI religious advice bot should NOT be a paid service (other than soliciting voluntary donations). Surely if “seasoned citizens” like my husband and me can do religion and moral theology research online for free, younger people who have lived with the Internet all their lives could do so too!Sincerely,Catherine McClarey
I’d be very curious how this AI answers questions. Does anyone want to bet that this AI Jesus would support the liberal position on any current hot-button issue? Would this AI Jesus tell us that the Gospel of Thomas should actually be canonical? Would he tell us that he didn’t really rise from the dead, that it was just a mass hallucination of his disciples? Will he be biased toward Catholic? Lutheran? Anglican? Methodist? Baptist? Presbyterian? Dutch Calvinist? Evangelical? Fundamentalist? Orthodox? Seventh-Day Adventist? Jehovah’s Witness? Mormon? Jesus Seminar?
I agree with Tim’s analysis above. I’d also like to throw in that I find it obscene that these developers will charge for access to this Jesus AI. This seems to me to be preying on the vulnerable and gullible. Anyone who wants an AI analysis of what Jesus might say could throw the question to CoPilot, ChatGPT, Grok, or whatever AI one thinks will give a reasonable answer and see how the analysis plays out. For free.