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As a reporter covering the technology industry, I spend a lot of time thinking about artificial intelligence.
Billboards for AI companies are scattered around my neighborhood in San Francisco. I regularly talk to people — company executives, my friends and family — about AI chatbots. I even tried using AI clones to fix my dating life.
So when I came across a Facebook group called AI for Church Leaders and Pastors, my interest was piqued. On the site I found a community of religious leaders discussing updates to AI programs like ChatGPT and Claude, even using image and video generators to recreate biblical scenes.
The parallels were intriguing: for many tech enthusiasts in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, AI has itself become a kind of religion. I wanted to probe deeper into how spirituality and AI were colliding in religious institutions across the country.
I searched online for clergy who had experimented with AI to help write their sermons and called more than a dozen. I also visited several local churches, synagogues and mosques to ask religious leaders what they thought about using AI in their work.
I quickly discovered that AI was already a controversial topic in many religious communities. I even found a Bible study group made up of engineers from top AI companies that met weekly in a church basement in Silicon Valley.
The religious leaders I was most interested in talking to were the ones who saw AI as a dilemma: Yes, technology could make their jobs easier. But at what cost?
I’ve found that most reporting on AI is about advances in the technology itself, such as updates to chatbots or the emerging global market for computers and the semiconductor chips that power them. But I’ve always had an interest in reporting on the other side of AI—how people use it and the ethical issues that arise from automating the most personal aspects of our lives.
Religion felt like a good topic to explore in my reporting because the foundations of most faiths are written scriptures that AI can swallow just like news articles or books. But I could also see many reasons why people would object to using AI in a practice where human intimacy is, in many ways, the whole point. How would religious leaders react to AI hallucinating – statements that chatbots fabricate?
One of my most informative conversations was with Jay Cooper, a pastor in Austin, Texas. He was the first of several religious leaders to pose the question: Can God speak through AI?
In his answer, Mr. Cooper cited a passage from the Book of John where Jesus, claiming to be king, confronts Roman officials. Jesus said to them, “All who are on the side of truth listen to me,” and a Roman official replied, “What is truth?”
On a personal level, I have always been interested in these kinds of conversations, even though I consider myself more “spiritual” than religious. My parents met in divinity school. My mother is a chaplain for a long time hospice. I attended a Lutheran college, where I often accompanied friends to morning chapel and participated in dorm room discussions about faith.
It is always helpful, when reporting on sensitive topics, to have some familiarity with the subject. While reporting, religious leaders often asked me my thoughts on AI, and being able to put together a thoughtful response was important to building a sense of trust.
The article was put together after I interviewed Rabbi Oren Hayon and Rabbi Josh Fixler about Zoom in December. With the help of Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, a Muslim AI researcher at the University of Washington, Rabbi Fixler had created a program called “Rabbi Bot”. Trained in Rabbi Fixler’s old sermons, Rabbi Bot could write sermons in his own style and even deliver them during a service in an AI version of his voice.
Watching a YouTube video of a sermon Rabbi Bot gave two years ago, I was intrigued by the scene of Rabbi Fixler speaking loudly to the chatbot during a service and his booming voice responding over the synagogue speakers , like from the sky . I knew right away that it would open my article.
In our Zoom call, Rabbi Hayon offered an insightful analysis of how AI fits into a larger story of technological tools that are changing the ways people worship. This includes technologies such as radio and television and the Internet, but also older tools, dating back to the invention of the printing press in the 15th century.
When it comes to AI in general, it’s easy for people to come out strongly for or against the technology. The task of journalists is not to take sides, but to inform. I hope readers come away from my article thinking in a more nuanced way about the idea of using AI in religion, and in other parts of life, too.
