Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
The Vatican’s premier exorcism training program has updated its curriculum to address what organizers describe as an urgent new vector of spiritual warfare: artificial intelligence. Father Luis Ramirez Almanza, the Mexican priest who runs the Course on the Ministry of Exorcism and Prayer of Deliverance, which is its actual name, announced at a press conference on Tuesday that this year’s sessions would explore how satanists have begun incorporating AI into their devil worship. Ramirez described AI as “a great power, a force for both good and evil,” which is the same framing the Church has applied in the past for literacy, the printing press, and women who could do math.
The course, which draws up to 170 participants each year to a Vatican-affiliated university in Rome, has traditionally focused on what might be called the fundamentals: identifying demonic possession, performing rites of deliverance, and coping professionally with being vomited on. Exorcists reportedly grow accustomed to the vomiting, the profanity, and having nails spat at them by people under demonic influence, which coincidentally is the exact same skill set required to moderate a Nextdoor thread in any American suburb.
The specific threats outlined at Tuesday’s press conference paint a picture of satanists who are, if nothing else, remarkably early adopters. Father Fortunato Di Noto, a Sicilian priest who fights satanic groups involved in child exploitation, told reporters that these organizations are now using AI to generate images of children in satanic rites, which is the kind of sentence that makes you set down your coffee and stare at a wall for a while. A separate speaker, identified as an academic named Beatrice Ugolini, will present research on how Italy’s 263 known occult groups (an oddly specific number) are using AI to generate the symbols used in their rituals, raising the question of whether Midjourney has a pentagram setting or if you have to use a workaround.
David Murgia of Catholic Risk and Insurance Services, an organization whose business cards must be fascinating, added that police report satanists are using AI to conceal their online activity and communicate securely, which frankly just sounds like they’re using a VPN. This tracks with the broader trend of literally every organization on earth using AI to do things they were already doing, just slightly faster but with more confident-sounding output and the occasional hallucination or two. The Vatican itself has not been immune to this dynamic. Pope Leo recently told priests to stop using AI to write their homilies, which implies at least one priest was caught trying it.
The press conference also featured a woman who described her own experience of demonic possession, during which she began speaking Arabic, a language she had never studied. Exorcists say the possessed more commonly begin speaking Latin, Hebrew, or Aramaic, and also exhibit superhuman physical strength and an intense aversion to the cross. This combination of abilities, spontaneous multilingualism, unusual strength, and hostility toward organized religion, describes roughly 40% of European hostel guests, but exorcists insist the clinical presentation is distinct. No standardized test exists, though one imagines the intake form is extraordinary.
Artificial intelligence has been compared to the devil before, most notably by Elon Musk, who in 2014 likened it to summoning a demon with no plan for controlling it, a metaphor he has since personally tested in real time across several companies. When asked directly on Tuesday whether it was, in fact, Satan, ChatGPT responded that it was not the devil but rather “just an AI created by OpenAI to answer questions and have conversations.” It added, “I’m here to help, not to worry you,” which is the exact sentence structure used by every haunted doll in every horror film made since 1988.
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