The image became an overnight social media sensation: a hauntingly lifelike rendering of the face of Jesus Christ claiming to be based off the Shroud of Turin using the latest in artificial intelligence technology.

The image was generated by British tabloid “The Daily Express” using popular generative AI tool Midjourney as part of a story on new evidence that the Shroud, which many Catholics believe was the burial cloth of Jesus, dates back 2,000 years ago to the time of Christ.

Perhaps most striking is that the new image supposedly drawn from the Shroud resembles classical depictions of Jesus from Christian art.

“It’s amazing how well the true face of Jesus has been handed on down through the centuries — a testament to the Church’s deep devotion to his sacred humanity,” wrote one user on X. 

“This is Jesus at the instant of his victory over death,” declared controversial Catholic media personality Michael Voris. 

But how faithful is the image to the imprint on the Shroud? Not very, according to Catholic experts on AI interviewed by Angelus.

“I don’t think it’s very scientifically accurate whatsoever,” said Matthew Sanders, founder and CEO of Catholic web developer Longbeard.

Because the tool involved, Midjourney, is trained on a vast collection of images from the internet and its own database, its rendition of Christ “is remarkably similar to other depictions of Jesus, and that’s no accident,” said Sanders, whose company has launched multiple Catholic-themed AI tools.

Still, Sanders says he found the Daily Express’ image “compelling” because it “conforms to many stereotypical archetypes of Jesus that we’ve seen” and because of how it depicted Christ’s injuries and other details from the Shroud.

“I don't want to diminish it, but I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in what you’re seeing here,” said Sanders.

Midjourney is the same tool that earlier this year famously created a false image of Pope Francis wearing a white puffer jacket inspired by Balenciaga.

AI researcher Joseph Vukov agreed that the image’s resemblance to popular depictions of Jesus is “not particularly surprising, because no doubt a lot of those images are part of what [Midjourney] was trained on.”

Vukov, a Catholic who teaches philosophy at Loyola University in Chicago, said he’s “no skeptic at all” when it comes to the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin and sees a lot of promise in generative AI tools like Midjourney. But AI, he believes, isn’t the ideal technology to create a scientifically faithful rendering of Christ’s face.

“Once you add AI to the mix, then you get all these training images in the mix as well,” said Vukov, author of the 2023 book “Staying Human in an Era of Artificial Intelligence” (New City Press, $19.95).

“It’s one of these cases where I think the more tech actually isn’t doing anything better, it’s probably doing something worse.”

Sanders Vukov Green
From left: Matthew Sanders, Joe Vukov, and Brian Patrick Green.

Brian Patrick Green, who teaches AI ethics at Santa Clara University, stressed that generative AI tools “are designed to be creative, they’re designed to embellish things” and that there’s reason to be skeptical of such renderings.

Moreover, tools like Midjourney allow users to choose from multiple versions of the image.

“Whoever generated it could have gone through dozens of iterations of the image before they decided this one was the best one,” said Green. “Every time you generate an image with generative AI, it throws in different little random tweaks to the image. And when they finally got one that they thought looked good and it was publishable, then that’s the one that we see here.”

But with advances in artificial intelligence happening so quickly, Sanders expects there could be efforts at “leveraging AI to try and represent a more accurate representation of Jesus based upon the Shroud” soon.

“I wouldn’t be surprised in the coming months if you see an updated depiction of him, which maybe doesn’t fit the more kind of classic motif we've seen,” said Sanders.

But could AI help create more realistic likenesses of historical figures, such as saints, using other clues?

Vukov thinks it’s a “neat idea in some ways,” but is still skeptical “that an AI will give us much insight into a historical figure.”

Nevertheless, it may “do a good job giving insight into our perception of a historical figure,” added Vukov.

“What this means is that an AI holds a kind of mirror up to our humanity. And in doing so it can reveal things we hadn’t noticed before. We might notice that we collectively have a certain way of thinking about or depicting some historical period or figure or saint.”

Sanders envisions being able to use contemporary portraits of Catholic saints to not only animate them, but use text-to-video and lip-synching technology to bring them to life. Users could interact with an avatar of St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, who could teach them from a library of content written by the saint more than 700 years ago.

“In this case with historical figures, I think it's less of a concern and it's good to have a long leash and let people experiment and play around with different techniques to bring the saint alive,” said Sanders, who last year launched Magisterium AI, an artificial intelligence tool trained on a selection of Church documents. 

When it comes to the Shroud of Turin, Green stresses that Catholic teaching doesn’t require belief in traditions like the authenticity of artifacts like the Shroud of Turin, and people’s faith shouldn’t depend on them.

On the other hand, Green said he doesn’t see the harm in images like The Daily Express’ Jesus rendering.

 “This is just a computer reconstruction using generative AI and I think it’s interesting,” said Green, who has helped the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education study AI. “It’s nothing faith-shaking.”