“Technology, when used wisely, becomes a tool of evangelization. Today, our mission field includes the digital world and artificial intelligence.”
Remember “Father Justin”? This is similar, but with a lay person. And, significantly: she doesn’t offer spiritual direction or absolve sins.
From OSV News:
A Connecticut diocese has a new fundraising officer on its team, and her name is Maria — but don’t expect to find her sitting at a desk in the pastoral center or making the rounds at parishes.
That’s because she was generated by artificial intelligence.
“We are piloting an AI Virtual Engagement Officer, Maria, to help us discern how technology may support deeper connection and accompaniment,” Bishop Frank J. Caggiano of Bridgeport said in a statement posted to the diocese’s dedicated webpage announcing the initiative earlier this month.
“Technology, when used wisely, becomes a tool of evangelization,” said Bishop Caggiano. “Today, our mission field includes the digital world and artificial intelligence.”
Maria is the centerpiece of a pilot program the diocese has launched to enhance its development strategy — an AI-generated agent who will contact program participants to gauge their pastoral and charitable donation interests, and then connect them with flesh-and-blood diocesan staffers for further follow-up.
Members of the diocese can opt in to participate in the pilot — set to run from one to two years — by providing their name, mobile phone number and parish via the program’s webpage.
“Maria will help us learn how digital tools can deepen our listening and foster more personal responses, while always keeping human relationships at the heart of the Church’s mission,” said Bishop Caggiano in his statement.
Related: Catholic Answers unveils ‘Father Justin,’ an AI priest
The agent was developed in collaboration with the Boston-based firm Givzey, which in 2024 rolled out the autonomous fundraising platform Version2.ai.
The platform uses virtual engagement officers, or VEOs, to expand and streamline donor engagement efforts — something The Catholic University of America did last year when it debuted a Version2.ai-created VEO named Grace.
Transparency is key to that process, said Deacon Patrick Toole, the diocese’s chancellor and secretary of the curia.
“We make it very clear when you’re contacted that Maria is a virtual agent, and that you can decide to opt in and receive messages from Maria or not,” said Deacon Toole. Prior to joining the diocesan staff in 2018, the deacon worked for more than three decades at tech giant IBM, receiving one of the company’s highest technical honors in 2017 for his work.
Maria’s name and blue blazer are a nod to the diocese’s consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and to Bishop Caggiano’s “deep devotion to Our Lady,” Deacon Toole told OSV News.
The agent’s facial features invoke an array of ethnicities, including Latino, Black, and Italian, reflecting the “really beautiful, diverse” and “magnificent” makeup of the diocese, the deacon said.
“We tried to work with the company to develop someone who could be identifiable with many, many different groups,” Deacon Toole said.
You can visit Bridgeport’s new engagement page and learn more about Maria here.
And you can learn more about the company behind this non-profit initiative, Version2.ai, at this link.
Meanwhile, here’s one reaction online to this experiment when Catholic University rolled it out last year, with a blonde AI figure named “Grace”:
As happens with any A.I. intrusion into my life, I had a lot of questions. What happens if you have a conversation with Grace? Where are those chat logs going? Are they public? Does an underpaid intern in the alumni department read through and pick out the best ones for a blog post? Are they “training” material for Grace’s future exchanges with alumni?
If you click the link that accompanied Grace’s text message, you are brought to a webpage; there, at the top, you see a perky, skinny blonde in a blazer. That’s Grace’s picture. Her highlights are growing out, so we can relate to her. She is, of course, a composite image, animated to speak as naturally as possible.
There’s something uncomfortable about all this. Somewhere between twelve percent and thirty percent of the content hosted on the Internet is pornography, which means that a significant portion of the image data used to create A.I. images of human beings is at least indirectly “trained” on porn. What percent of porn is skinny blonde girls? How much of it—no doubt unintentionally—went into making Grace? These are questions that are relevant for the new digital ambassador for the only American university with a papal charter. I’m sure the school has some sort of H.R.-approved filter on her, so she won’t respond inappropriately to anything nasty. But I still wonder about the stuff she’s made of.
