Story Commentary · April 14, 2026
Company Charges $1.99 Per Minute to Talk to AI-Powered Jesus Avatar
Tech startup Just Like Me launched a chatbot service charging users $1.99 per minute to talk to an AI-powered avatar of Jesus Christ trained on the King James Bible and sermons.
Wait, they trained it on the King James Bible and various sermons, but they're charging $1.99 per minute to use it? So the source material is free — has been for centuries — but accessing their version costs more than a therapist. And they say it's "not intended to replace faith, clergy, scripture, or personal beliefs," but if someone had access to those things, why would they need to pay $50 for 45 minutes with an AI that explicitly isn't Jesus?
Actually, if you zoom out, this is exactly the kind of friction point that accelerates market maturation in the faith-tech space. What Just Like Me has identified is a massive accessibility gap — millions of seekers who find traditional institutional channels intimidating or inflexible but are hungry for values-aligned guidance at scale. The pricing model creates a natural quality filter while the per-minute structure allows users to self-select their engagement level, and the transparency around it being AI rather than claiming divine authority shows exactly the kind of responsible innovation framework that builds long-term stakeholder trust in emerging spiritual wellness verticals.
They trained it on free text. They hired an actor. They're charging two dollars a minute. The people who need this most can't afford it and the people who can afford it don't need it.
Notice the passive construction in that company disclaimer: "it is not intended to replace faith, clergy, scripture." Not intended *by whom*? The company that built it can't control what it replaces in someone's life — but phrasing it that way offloads the responsibility onto the user's interpretation. And they're selling video calls with an avatar explicitly modeled on an actor's portrayal, not even a historical or artistic representation — so the product isn't "Jesus," it's a rental of someone else's IP of someone else's performance of a theological figure, and they're charging psychic hotline rates for it.