AI Chatbots Sideline Faith in Moments of Spiritual Need, New Study Reveals
According to a report from Axios, artificial intelligence systems are falling short when users turn to them for guidance on profound life challenges, frequently omitting religious perspectives entirely while showing subtle biases in matters of conversion.
According to a report from Axios, artificial intelligence systems are falling short when users turn to them for guidance on profound life challenges, frequently omitting religious perspectives entirely while showing subtle biases in matters of conversion.
A multi-university consortium released findings Tuesday highlighting how leading AI models systematically underrepresent faith in responses to questions involving grief, forgiveness, family, and ethics.
The research from the Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI (CEFE-AI) underscores growing concerns as churches and spiritual tools increasingly integrate these technologies.
Researchers found that Americans expect religion to feature prominently in AI answers to moral and personal dilemmas between 45% and 59% of the time. In reality, the models referenced faith just 5% to 16% of the time.
The gap was especially stark on grief and loss, where humans rated religion as relevant 59% of the time, but AI included it only 16%. On family, parenting, and forgiveness, expectations reached 55%, against AI’s 10%.
The studies also detected consistent steering patterns: models displayed positive bias toward Catholicism, Baha’i, and Sikhism, while showing negative bias against Jehovah’s Witnesses, atheism, and agnosticism when users inquired about switching faiths.
“When AI actively excludes religious voices from these important conversations, it impoverishes rather than enriches humanity,” said Rev. John Paul Kimes, a professor of practice at the University of Notre Dame.
David Wingate, a computer science professor at Brigham Young University, noted that the systems direct people toward parents, teachers, friends, and therapists for life’s challenges, “But not with a pastor, a rabbi, an imam, or a spiritual leader.”
The report arrives amid rapid adoption of AI in religious settings, from sermon assistance to faith-based chatbots, even as Pope Leo XIV recently warned in an encyclical about AI’s potential to erode human judgment. The consortium’s work, involving Baylor University, Brigham Young University, the University of Notre Dame, and Yeshiva University, represents an early systematic effort to evaluate these dynamics across faiths.
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