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    Millions turn to AI chatbots for spiritual guidance and confession | Bible Chat hits 30 million downloads as users seek algorithmic absolution.
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    Millions turn to AI chatbots for spiritual guidance and confession | Bible Chat hits 30 million downloads as users seek algorithmic absolution.


    Millions turn to AI chatbots for spiritual guidance and confession | Bible Chat hits 30 million downloads as users seek algorithmic absolution.

    https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/millions-turn-to-ai-chatbots-for-spiritual-guidance-and-confession/

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    29 Comments

    1. MetaKnowing on

      “Tens of millions of people are confessing secrets to AI chatbots trained on religious texts, with apps like Bible Chat reaching over 30 million downloads and Catholic app Hallow briefly topping Netflix, Instagram, and TikTok in Apple’s App Store. In China, people are using DeepSeek to try to decode their fortunes. In her report, Lauren Jackson examined “faith tech” apps that cost users up to $70 annually, with some platforms claiming to channel divine communication directly.

      While a service like ChatwithGod operates as a “spiritual advisor,” its conversational nature is convincing enough that users often question whether they are speaking directly with a divine being

      The most frequent question from users is, “Is this actually God I am talking to?”

      “They’re generally affirming. They are generally ‘yes men,'” Ryan Beck, chief technology officer at Pray.com, told the Times.

      This validation tendency creates theological complications. Traditional faith practices often involve challenging believers to confront uncomfortable truths, but chatbots avoid this spiritual friction.”

    2. CurlSagan on

      Douglas Adams would be cracking up right now with masses of people hiring electric monks. If you’re gonna ask an AI to do all your own thinking, you might as well ask it to do all your praying too.

    3. ryry1237 on

      AI is a tool and should only ever remain a tool. Any use of it beyond that purpose will only lead to disaster.

    4. KrayzieBone187 on

      I’m more grateful every day that my recent career training program had a big focus on AI and what it is actually good for. It really is a great tool for trying to find work in the current climate.

      They have made job search a full time job now, so I feel like it is an essential tool to get some actual results in my predicament.

    5. Luke_Cocksucker on

      I guess “priest” is another job that AI will be taking over. Now they can spend their time doing what they love…

    6. nesh34 on

      This is honestly a pretty good use case for AI. One of the best. People will open up to an AI in a way they’d struggle to do so for another person.

      It’ll be like a journal that can answer back.

      The one major downside is privacy but that is a solvable problem with a trusted execution engine.

    9. HasGreatVocabulary on

      I think the best bet for sanity for the rest of the century is to just accept that stupid people exist, will exist, will forever cause problems because they often do not know how stupid they are, and they will almost certainly continue to generate news and affect the world on account of their stupidity, for the foreseeable future, just as they always have for thousands of years. It’s tiring, but like change, it is one of the constants of existence on this planet.

    12. just_a_knowbody on

      It’s surprising to me how many Christians are willing to cede their faith to a machine.

      I always knew that there’d be some people that God in the machine. And there are already some AI cults. But this is crazy.

    13. hyperforms9988 on

      There’s upside to this idea. If you can get a chatbot that is actually legitimately trained to be impartial and to have no underlying design to push something for somebody’s gain, you can remove one of religion’s most pervasive problems… it being used as a tool for manipulation and control. It wouldn’t ask for money as it has no use for money, it wouldn’t ask you to do things for its gain as AI doesn’t stand to benefit from manipulating you into doing something, etc. You would remove the corrupt human element from the exchange. No more charlatans. No more pretenders who claim that they speak God’s words and can talk to God who demand worship and tribute from you in his name.

      Of course, it can go the other way too. AI simply does what it’s trained to do with the materials that you give it, the privacy concerns if you’re interacting with an AI that’s running online and all your input is going over the cloud and into somebody’s server and they can use everything you’ve written in whatever way they choose… to sell, to blackmail, to personally tailor an AI to take advantage of you, etc.

    15. tennis_widower on

      Maybe these e-clerics that know religious texts can break through to those who think any of these posers in politics’ actions would have been in line with their supposed deity scripture.

    16. ErikTheRed707 on

      Absolute knobs. You will get more spiritual guidance from a bartender than you will this electric rinse and repeat machine that regurgitates “borrowed” information. A dog would provide better advice.

    17. korphd on

      This is not bad actually, since the machine answers, god doesn’t(if you hear voices, seek help)
      It won’t scam believers, not lead them to bigotry(i hope)

    18. Mmortt on

      This isn’t going to end well. Not to say that religion is currently doing well. It greatly depends on the metric I suppose.

    20. ImTooSaxy on

      What an amazingly easy way to control a certain part of the population. Just make a conservative AI chatbot and eventually you’ll end up with something like Saint Charlie Kirk, patron saint of talking over people and fountains.

    21. reward72 on

      These people really can’t think for themselves. I already regret trusting ChatGPT’s advices how to replace my car stereo – I wasted a grand on things that wouldn’t work.

    23. Ezekilla7 on

      This has always been on my list of fears with AI as far back as I can remember. Whether it’s the creation of artificial intelligence or alien contact, there will always be a certain percentage of the human population that will worship these things and create cults around them.

      As of 2025 I do not find our current chatbots to be that impressive. I believe they are still in their primitive stage and that they are going to get exceedingly better. As primitive as I may still think these things are, there are people right now who have been falling in love with these things, using them as a therapist, and digitizing dead people to conjure the illusion that they brought them back from the dead.

      It honestly would not surprise me if every major religion in the world got its own unique super intelligent AI that was the central Authority that has all of the answers as that specific religion teaches it. Every believer will confess its deepest darkest secrets to this thing. The leaders will be able to control the flock with the aid of the superintelligence at a level never even dreamed of before.

      We have a lot of concerning things that we’re going to have to address immediately. I fear that our politicians and leaders are way too old to grasp how urgent this is. The ones that do understand will continue to ignore it because there’s too much money to be made and they’re taking a bribe to ensure nothing gets in the way.

    24. runthepoint1 on

      Dude if your question is “is this AI bot God?”, then you have WAY WAY bigger problems than trying to understand religion

    27. ablackcloudupahead on

      This headline is straight out of dystopian science fiction. The future is here and it is grim