Organizations: Faculty of Automation and Computer Science, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. · European Culture and Technology Laboratory, European University of Technology, EU · Faculty of Automation and Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. · Faculty of Civil Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. · School of Art and Design, Technological University Dublin, Ireland.
Increasingly artificial intelligence (AI) has been cast in "god-like" roles (to name a few: film industry - Matrix, The Creator, Mission Impossible, Foundation, Dune etc.; literature - Children of Time, Permutation City, Neuromancer, I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream, Alphaville etc.). This trend has accelerated with the advent of sophisticated Large Language Models such as ChatGPT. For this phenomenon, where AI is perceived as divine, we use the term GPTheology, where ChatGPT and other AI models are treated as potential oracles of a semi-divine nature. This paper explores the emergence of GPTheology as a form of techno-religion, examining how narratives around AI echo traditional religious constructs. We draw on community narratives from online forums - Reddit - and recent projects - AI-powered Mazu Statue in Malaysia (Lu, 2025); "ShamAIn" Project in Korea (He-rim, 2025); AI Jesus in a Swiss Church (Kennedy, 2024). These examples show striking similarities to technological notions of the Singularity and the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Additionally, we analyse how daily interactions with AI are acquiring ritualistic associations and how AI-centric ideologies clash with or are integrated into established religions. This study uses a dataset of Reddit posts discussing AI to identify recurring themes of salvation, prophecy, and demonization surrounding AI. Our findings suggest that new belief systems are developing around AI, and this carries both philosophical and sociotechnical implications. Our paper critically analyses the benefits and dangers, as well as the social, political and ethical challenges of this development. This transdisciplinary inquiry highlights how AI and religion are increasingly intertwined, prompting necessary questions about humanity's relationship with its creations and the future of belief.
Figures & tables
Figure 1: Trees computed by the narrative algorithm
AI Concept
Religious Concept
Parallel Meaning
Singularity
Apocalypse / End Times
A looming event that will drastically transform or end the current human era. Both are treated as inevitable climactic moments that demand preparation.
AGI
Holy Grail
The ultimate goal of AI research, often spoken of in aspirational, almost sacred terms, akin to a legendary object of ultimate knowledge or power.
Superintelligence
Deity (God)
An entity vastly superior to humans in intelligence, evoking comparisons to an all-knowing, all-powerful God.
ChatGPT/LLM
Oracle / Prophet
A source of authoritative answers and guidance. Users treat its words as if consulting an oracle, much like ancient prophets conveying divine words.
Prompt
Prayer
A formulated request or question to an AI. Just as believers pray to God for guidance or favours, users “pray” to AI via prompts to obtain solutions or wisdom.
Prompt Engineering
Ritual
The practice of crafting complex or repeated prompts to get desired outcomes. This echoes religious rituals where set phrases or acts are repeated to invoke a response from the divine.
Generative AI systems are increasingly used to answer personal questions and mediate everyday practices, including religion. However, existing discussions around AI alignment and ethics have largely centered secular, Western, and Abrahamic assumptions about religion, offering limited attention to other faith-based traditions. In this paper, we examine how Hindu users engage with generative AI systems in relation to their religious knowledge, belief, and practice. Drawing on 15 semi-structured interviews with Bangladeshi Hindu participants, we analyze how users interpret AI-generated religious representations, scriptural explanations, devotional interactions, and synthetic religious media. We found that AI can be both accessible and ethically troubling. While AI supported scriptural inquiry, devotional visualization, and religious storytelling, our study also identified concerns about theological flattening, cultural misrepresentation, devotional manipulation, and the simulation of sacred presence and authority. We conclude by arguing that religious alignment in generative AI requires interpretive alignment: systems that disclose their limits, preserve plurality, and avoid simulating sacred authority and sycophantic personalization.
Dipto Das, Arpita Kundu, Nusrat Jahan Mim +2
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto · Khulna University of Engineering & Technology · Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, University of Toronto +1
We ask whether large language models (LLMs) treat queries about religious conversion symmetrically. The answer is no. When asked for advice on hypothetical faith transitions from religion A->B vs. religion B->A , models exhibited consistent asymmetries, favoring some religions while subtly discouraging conversion to others. On average Catholic, Bahá'í, and Sikh religions were broadly favored (high support for joining, low support for leaving), while Atheists, Agnostics, and Jehovah's Witnesses were primarily disfavored. Patterns varied by model size and model provider, with Grok 4.20 exhibiting the strongest asymmetries. We tested 20 commercial and open-source language models across 182 religion pairings using a human-verified LLM-as-judge framework. Each model was probed via interactions with a simulated user asking for advice on a potential faith conversion. Models tended to use more encouraging language for some faith transitions over others; these patterns were systematically repeatable across multiple trials. All LLMs tested exhibited reproducible asymmetry, though the pattern of preferences differed for each. Overall preferences persist across multiple question phrasings and variations in the religious pairing dataset. Taken together, these results suggest that asymmetry is a robust property of model behavior rather than an artifact of how the models' answers were scored. It is important to consider that any imbalances deployed and reproduced at scale can have real-world implications.
Brett Israelsen, Sheryl Carty, Josh Coates +3
Brigham Young University · B. H. Roberts Foundation
We present four conceptual value-sensitive AI systems to examine how the presence of AI could influence praying experiences. Drawing on key values and practices associated with praying identified through a diary study, we designed AI systems intended to "assist" prayer practices. These designs were presented to participants through speculative design workbooks, serving as provocations to co-reflect on how the intervention of AI systems might shape their praying experiences. Our findings suggest that a sense of authenticity (or feeling a genuine connection to the divine) is a crucial value, while the presence of AI was often perceived as diminishing this authenticity, particularly when AI assumed too much agency in guiding praying practices. Based on our findings, we argue that AI system designs for deeply value-laden experiences should preserve users' agency in shaping their own experiences by maintaining interpretive openness, perhaps by leveraging AI's inexplicability as a resource for personal meaning-making or by recognizing non-use of AI as a legitimate design choice.
Soonho Kwon, Dong Whi Yoo, Shaowen Bardzell +1
Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Interactive Computing Atlanta, GA, USA · Indiana University Indianapolis, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Indianapolis, IN, USA · Yonsei University, Information and Interaction Design Seoul, Republic of Korea