November 2025 - Magazine - Page 117
November 2025
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 greater common god: artificial Intelligence?
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 chat 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 evergrowing 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".
Religious chatbots might be trained on scripture and dutifully quote verses, but
they share the same bizarre hallucinations and shortcomings of other AIs
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 are
"murtis", sacred statues and images of deities believed to house divine energies and often understood to embody the gods themselves. These items are often central to religious rituals, including "puja" 3 offerings of mantras (chants) accompanied by food, flowers, incense and light
which can be presented to murtis 3 and "darshan" 3 the act of seeing and being seen by divine
objects and people.
"What shows up in the news, robotic Krishnas or chatbots, is often treated as a cute novelty. But
it's far beyond novelty at this point," Walters says.
When ChatGPT and generative AI boomed, a number of entrepreneurs, devotees and technology enthusiasts were inspired to build chatbots that would put you in direct contact with the
teachings of various Hindu deities 3 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 a whopping 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 says he dropped out of his MBA midway to pursue funding for the
project.
Tanmay Shresth, a 23-year-old from New Delhi, India, who works in IT, uses yet 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 that's changing at a breakneck pace. "At times,
it's hard to find someone to talk to about religious or existential subjects," Shresth says. "AI is nonjudgmental, accessible and yields thoughtful responses."
Krishna and Shiva aren't the only religious figures getting the AI treatment. On the AI platform
Chatacter.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. It's not just about making the app intelligent, but about making the experience more personal and authentic," says Swami Harsha, content lead, monk and full-time volunteer 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 just 15 hours after its launch.
The 2025 Maha Kumbh Mela, a pilgrimage hosted in India that is often cited as the world's largest religious gathering, embraced AI for a variety of purposes including the Kumbh Sah'AI'yak (Kumbh Helper) 3 a multilingual chatbot that helped with travel and accommodation
