Matthew Harvey Sanders still remembers how confusing it was to become Catholic. Raised Protestant, he became curious about Catholicism thanks to a high school crush and in college decided to convert. The process was grueling, filled with constant questions: Why do Catholics care so much about Mary? Why speak to saints instead of directly to God? Google often provided conflicting answers, and Sanders couldn't exactly call his priest every time a new question arose.

When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Sanders saw a business opportunity in a conversational chatbot focused on helping people understand Catholicism. The following year, Sanders launched Magisterium AI, an LLM-based bot that can answer complex theological questions. The system relies on existing Gemini and GPT models, but is trained on over 32,000 Roman Catholic doctrines and teachings spanning 2,000 years.

“There's no way any priest would be able to have the information we have in our database inside of their heads,” says Sanders, 44. “Even the best theologians in the world, it’s not fair to expect them to act like a machine.”

Within three weeks of launch, Sanders noticed a surprising shift in user behavior. Though he’d originally built the product as a research tool for people interested in converting, students, scholars and priests, users began asking highly nuanced moral and personal questions. That pushed him to start developing his own Catholic AI model, Ephrem, expected to launch in 2027. The goal is for Ephrem to identify Church teachings and saints relevant to a user’s question, then suggest specific readings, prayers, habits or virtues to cultivate — what Sanders describes as putting a saint in your pocket.

The Catholic Church is increasingly taking a public role in the AI debate. This........

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