Should You Talk to God Using an App?
The growing use of chatbots and AI in religion has upsides and downsides, BU scholar Margarita Guillory says. Photo via iStock/leolintang
Should You Talk to God Using an App?
Boston University’s Margarita Guillory studies pros, cons of tech and AI in religion
It may come as a surprise that the first chatbot was invented in the 1960s. Eliza, developed at MIT, took questions from users via electric typewriters hooked to mainframes. One of those questions, says Boston University’s Margarita Guillory, was, “Are you God?”
“From the very beginning, engagements [between people and chatbots] have had to do with religion,” notes Guillory, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of religion and of African American and Black diaspora studies. Today, houses of worship embrace tech and artificial intelligence, from apps that supposedly channel Jesus to AI-written sermons and children’s lessons. No one begrudges clergy automating church administrative functions, as the secular world is doing. But some believers worry about passing off tech work as a cleric’s own and that AI might not be able to capture the nuances of religious teachings.
Can you find God in cyberspace? We asked Guillory, author of Africana Religion in the Digital Age (Routledge, 2024), who’s teaching Religion in the Digital Age this semester.
This interview was edited for clarity and brevity.
Q&A
With Margarita Guillory
BU Today: Which religions are tapping technology and how new is this phenomenon?
Chatbots are aligned with all sorts of religions. There’s one for Judaism. There’s one aligned with Islam.
This intersection between religion and technology is not new. In my class, I start off with a lecture on spiritualism, this belief that the human personality survives death and that mediums serve as channels so those disembodied entities can communicate with those left on earth. They didn’t just consider what they were doing a religion. They considered what they were doing a science, and they drew from like the latest technologies to express their religiosities. Spiritualism arises around the same time as the telegraph, in the mid-1800s. Spiritualists, particularly mediums, saw themselves as embodied telegraphs who had this ability to communicate across distances.
This intersection between religion and technology is not new.
BU Today: What are the downsides to religious spaces using technology?
There’s this fear in the Catholic space, where the chatbot may receive confessions. Is your confession that’s given to this chatbot the same as giving it to a priest? Not only is that a question of authenticity, [but] that becomes a question of authority, when artificial intelligence begins to operate in these spaces that were held by human beings. Many institutionalized religions have hierarchical structures. When you integrate a robot or chatbot, it starts to disturb these boundaries of authority.
We can also talk about Japan. Mindar is a robot in a Buddhist temple. It administers rituals. It teaches lessons. It gives sermons. Some felt as if this robot served in the same capacity as the Buddhist priest. But others say it just felt inauthentic. It felt cold.
There is this great cartoon [set] in a church. Behind the lectern is a robot dressed in the vestments of a priest, delivering a homily. One of the parishioners says, “This sermon is near perfect, but it lacks soul.”
BU Today: What are the upsides?
So many people, especially Generation Z, feel comfortable talking to chatbots about very deep, existential-type questions. When we talk about this intersection between religion and technology, sure, we’re talking about traditional, institutionalized world religions, but we have to talk about religion in a variety of other ways, too. There are other spiritualities. There are conjuring-based religions like witchcraft that are using apps. One of the largest sites on TikTok is WitchTok, with witches from all over the world.
BU Today: So, you believe that concern about authenticity is legitimate, but you also see potential uses in AI’s ability to help foster community and answer deep questions?
Yes, I would say that it’s both. This could potentially disrupt traditional religious traditions in harmful ways, when individuality begins to subsume community. People go to these spaces for community. At the same time, for some individuals, institutional spaces have hierarchical structures; there may be certain needs that these places just can’t meet. We see that happening in real time. We see empty churches.
We were just talking in my class about “implicit” religions. Gaming is a form of implicit religion. We’re not saying that it’s religion, [but] it acts like a religion. I argue in my own work that with the rise of digital technologies, you’re having more outlets where people can find meaning.
BU Today: Can apps and AI convey nuanced themes of faith?
When I started engaging with chatbots and asking questions about religion, the answers were very simple. Then I would ask questions about religions like Voodoo, and they would be very racialized, stereotypical. This was maybe five years ago. [But] this technology evolved very quickly. I was writing an essay last summer and spending time with Gemini [Google’s AI models], and the answers were way more nuanced.