People are using AI to talk to God

BBCWorshippers from all the world's major religions are experimenting with chatbots. But Hinduism, with its long tradition of welcoming physical representations of gods and deities, offers a particularly vivid laboratory for this fusion of faith and technology.As AI touches every aspect of the human experience, India may offer a glimpse of what it will mean to interact with the divine through our newly talkative machines."People feel disconnected from community, from elders, from temples. For many, talking to an AI about God is a way of reaching for belonging, not just spirituality," says Holly Walters, an anthropologist and lecturer at Wellesley College in the US, who studies sacred objects, pilgrimage and ritual practices in South Asia. The seep of AI into religion is inevitable, Walters says. "And I say it is inevitable because it is already happening."The past few years have seen many religious experiments with AI. In 2023, an AI app called Text With Jesus drew calls of blasphemy for allowing chats with AI manifestations of Jesus and other biblical figures. The same year, a QuranGPT app designed to answer questions and provide guidance based on the Muslim holy text got so much traffic it reportedly crashed within a day of its launch. You can chat with AI versions of Confucius, the German theologian Martin Luther and an ever-growing list of other spiritual figures. AI has even been the basis for entire religions, such as the Way of the Future church, a group started by former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski, which hopes to develop and promote the realisation of a god "based on artificial intelligence".But the specifics of Hindu worship make it an especially interesting case study. In a tradition where the sacred regularly takes a physical, tangible form, technology can become another vessel through which the gods appear in daily life, Walters and others say. One example is "murtis", sacred statues and images of deities believed to house divine energies and often understood to embody the gods themselves. These items are central to religious rituals, including "puja" – offerings of mantras accompanied by food, flowers, incense and light – and "darshan" – the act of seeing and being seen by divine objects and people.When ChatGPT and generative AI boomed, entrepreneurs, devotees and technology enthusiasts were inspired to build chatbots that would put users in direct contact with the teachings of various Hindu deities – including multiple AIs all called GitaGPT. Vikas Sahu, a business student from Rajasthan, India, developed his GitaGPT as a side project. He expected a slow start, but Sahu says the service gained 100,000 users in just a few days. Since then, the work has expanded to create chatbots based on other Hindu scriptures for AI versions of other gods. Sahu says he hopes to "morph it into an avenue to the teachings of all [Hindu] gods and goddesses". He dropped out of his MBA midway to pursue funding for the project.Tanmay Shresth, a 23-year-old from New Delhi, who works in IT, uses another chatbot based on the Bhagavad Gita, which claims to put users in direct contact with Krishna. Shresth says the AI offers something steady in a world changing at breakneck speed. "At times, it's hard to find someone to talk to about religious or existential subjects," he says. "AI is non-judgmental, accessible and yields thoughtful responses."Krishna and Shiva aren't the only religious figures getting the AI treatment. On the AI platform Character.AI, a chatbot based on the teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi, a renowned Indian sage and holy man from the early 20th Century, has seen some 35,000 interactions.Major spiritual organisations are embracing the shift. In early 2025, Sadhguru, a popular Indian guru and founder of the Isha Foundation, launched the "Miracle of Mind" meditation app which includes a number of AI features. "We're using AI to deliver ancient wisdom in a contemporary way," says Swami Harsha, content lead and monk at the Isha Foundation. "Content throughout the app has been curated from 35 years of Sadhguru's teachings, distilling it into just the right message someone might need that day." The app reportedly crossed one million downloads in 15 hours after its launch.The 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, a pilgrimage hosted in India and often cited as the world's largest religious gathering, embraced AI for a variety of purposes including the Kumbh Sah’AI’yak – a multilingual chatbot that assisted with travel and accommodation. Internet-based tools also helped devotees join rituals from afar. A Digital Mahakumbh Experience Centre used virtual and augmented reality tools to take visitors on immersive journeys bringing mythological stories to life. Devotees video-called relatives to let them participate in digital darshan. Some even symbolically immersed themselves in the sacred waters of Triveni Sangam online.AI is also being employed for spiritual and academic research. A 2022 study used a large language model to compare the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, finding a mean similarity of 73% between the subjects discussed. The authors said such analysis could reveal hidden themes not apparent through manual reading and unlock new understandings of sacred texts.According to Walters, AI is simply an extension of how Hinduism and technology have long intersected. The Hindu ritual of "aarti", where devotees offer light from oil lamps in circular movements before murtis, has already seen automation. At the 2017 Ganpati festival, organisers used a robotic arm to perform aarti for the god Ganesha. In Kerala, the Irinjadappilly Sri Krishna Temple houses a robotic elephant named Irinjadapilly Raman. "It performs rituals, accepts offerings and gives blessings just like a live temple elephant would," Walters says.For centuries, religious communities have been anchored to priests, scholars and spiritual leaders, says Reverend Lyndon Drake, a research fellow at the University of Oxford who studies theological ethics and AI. But "AI chatbots might indeed challenge the status of religious leaders," Drake says, by introducing new ways to connect with scripture and influencing beliefs in subtle ways.In one instance, GitaGPT claimed, in the voice of Krishna, that "killing in order to protect dharma is justified," Sahu says. Other AIs spun around the Bhagavad Gita made similar declarations, sparking criticism on social media. "I realised how serious it was and proceeded to fine-tune the AI and guardrail such responses," he says.Drake warns that AI often gives a false sense of neutrality, when interpretations of sacred texts have always been contested. Walters adds that in India, the danger is that some users might see AI outputs not as algorithms but as divine voices. "The danger isn't just that people might believe what these bots say, it's that they may not realise they have the agency to question it," she says."Even if one visits the temple often, it is rare you get into a deep conversation with a priest," Shresth says. "So bots like these bridge the gap by offering scripture-backed guidance at the distance of a hand."Read the whole story here: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251016-people-are-using-ai-to-talk-to-god

People are using AI to talk to God

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Namibian Sun 2026-01-30

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People are using AI to talk to God

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Namibian Sun 2026-01-30

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