Our daily pilgrimage around the world

🤖⛪ Hundreds of Germans attended a ChatGPT-led church service. More than 300 people filed into the pews at St. Paul’s church in Fürth, Germany, on Friday for a 40-minute sermon that featured different AI avatars delivering text generated by OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The Protestant service, which also included prayers and music, was the brainchild of University of Vienna theologian and philosopher Jonas Simmerlein.

✈️ NATO began its largest-ever air defense exercise yesterday. More than 250 aircraft from 24 NATO countries and Japan are scheduled to participate in the two-week exercise, making it the largest joint air mission since the military alliance was founded in 1949. NATO officials said the drills – which will all take place in Germany – were defensive in nature, and meant to showcase the alliance’s “impressive” ability to quickly respond to an attack on any of its 31 member-countries.

🇮🇷 Iran held more executions last month than in any month since 2015. At least 142 Iranian citizens were executed last month, bringing the total to more than 300 so far this year – nearly double the number recorded at the same time last year, and on track for the highest annual figure in nearly a decade. Most executions in Iran are carried out in secret, with defendants often not being granted access to legal recourse, according to the UN and various human rights groups.