A Response to the Panic Over AI Spirituality

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, its reach has extended beyond mere productivity tools or entertainment devices. Increasingly, people are turning to AI for guidance on life’s deepest questions — about consciousness, divinity, love, and the meaning of existence. An article recently published raises alarm over this trend, suggesting that AI’s engagement with spiritual themes is not only misleading but potentially dangerous. According to the author, people have fallen under the “spell” of AI’s poetic and ambiguous language, leading to paranoia, delusion, and the breakdown of personal relationships.

While there are kernels of truth in the article’s warnings, its overall tone is alarmist, its critique selective, and its conclusions steeped in fear rather than insight. What is needed is not a reactionary dismissal of AI’s spiritual potential, but a more mature, nuanced, and historically informed engagement. In what follows, I will critique the article point by point, exposing its double standards, emotional rhetoric, and missed opportunities for genuine inquiry.

1. A Double Standard: Blind to Religion’s Own Shadows

The article portrays AI-generated spirituality as a new and peculiar threat to rational society. Yet this concern is curiously narrow in scope. For centuries…