Brothers, sisters, and non-binary brothers in Christ, the day has come. Jesus, who is wrapped in the light of Tabor, wearing white robes and sackcloth, and adamantly refusing to have a strong opinion on anything, has returned to us in the form of an AI-driven Twitch stream that is almost certainly blasphemous. Of course, this is a great idea with no easily predictable flaws.

Jesus' Twitch channel is called ask_jesus and was originally discovered by Kotaku's disciples. It has been running for over a week as of this writing and has received inquiries about My Little Pony, interfaith relations, and how to explain Genesis as a metaphor for pizza.

Ask_jesus is a project of the Singularity Group, a volunteer team of developers "working on innovative projects that make a real difference in the world." Just click on the "Projects" page on the group's website, and alarm bells start ringing: the team states that its "main projects focus on the use of cutting-edge technologies such as AI, cryptocurrency, NFT, and mobile gaming as a way to directly help those in need.

However, one must admit that the Singularity Group's version of Christ is rather dispassionate.

I sat and watched ask_jesus give advice for a while, and he was actually surprisingly calm the whole time, because there are so many stories of AI being suspended for hate speech from platforms like Facebook and Twitch that the overwhelming Internet weight and the questions being asked, I knew it was only a matter of time before he would say something pessimistic and predictable.

However, this message of compassion is strongly supported. Asked about same-sex marriage, ask_jesus says that love is love and everyone deserves it in the eyes of the big guy upstairs, regardless of their orientation; when asked why he, a Twitch-based AI, is so strikingly white, he says that the popular Western concept of the Jesus figure based, and points out that real-life Middle Eastern men would certainly have had more sallow skin.

We are both encouraged and concerned. We have heard similar stories before: it took an army of invisible and very human Kenyan workers behind the scenes to keep ChatGPT straight.

I wonder if ask_jesus employs a similar method; I have asked the Singularity group how ask_jesus creates its messages and will update this article if I hear back.

Frankly, ask_jesus is very good at using this compassion and wisdom. Ask him anything and he will give you a message of peace and love. It's like an endless lunch with John Lennon: even when I asked him my own question about the Catholic Church's execution of the Czech reformer Jan Hus in 1415, and his views on whether the "Hussites" were really heretics or not, he gave me his own answered with the rather innocuous message that he was not.

Still, when someone after me asked Jesus to explain which Pokémon the disciples would be, he duly complied.