CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — The faith-based AI market is expanding, and the price of spiritual access now comes with a receipt: a platform offering video calls with an avatar of Jesus generated by artificial intelligence charges $1.99 per minute. In the latest twist of corporate capture, religious guidance is being packaged as a consumer-facing experience, complete with subscription logic, premium upgrades and a market pitch dressed up as comfort. **Who Gets Sold the Sacred** The tech company Just Like Me says its AI Jesus offers words of prayer and encouragement in various languages, remembers previous conversations and speaks through not-quite-synced lips, though it can glitch. CEO Chris Breed said, “You do feel a little accountable to the AI. They’re your friend. You’ve made an attachment.” That attachment is the product. The relationship is the revenue stream. The rush to create faith-based generative AI comes as chatbots have become popular for therapy, medical advice, companionship and romance. The religious AI tools now range from alleged Hindu gurus and Buddhist priests to AI Jesuses and chatbots akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Catholics. As these tools become more common, many people are reckoning with how they shape relationships to faith, authority and spiritual guidance. The hierarchy is not subtle: companies build the tools, users pay for access, and spiritual life gets routed through platforms that can remember, nudge and monetize. The base article describes a market expanding across religions, but the structure underneath is the same one that governs so much of digital life — a few firms controlling the interface to what people are told is guidance. **What They Call Guidance** Christian software engineer Cameron Pak has developed criteria for apps designed for Christians, saying they must clearly identify themselves as AI and “must not fabricate or misrepresent Scripture.” He said, “AI cannot pray for you, because the AI is not alive.” Pak also created a website with curated Christian apps he believes meet his criteria, including a sermon translator and an AI coach designed to help users overcome lust. He said, “AI, especially if you give it all the tools that it needs, it can be so helpful. But it also can be so dangerous.” Beth Singler, an anthropologist who studies religion and AI at the University of Zurich, said some models have been shut down or overhauled because they generated misinformation or raised worries about data privacy. She said people from many faiths are grappling with larger philosophical questions about what role, if any, AI should play in religion. Singler said Islam has “prohibitions against representations of humanoids,” prompting discussions among some Muslims about whether AI in general should be “forbidden.” Those concerns sit alongside the basic fact that the tools are being sold into intimate parts of life. The article notes that some models have already been shut down or overhauled, which is what happens when the apparatus moves fast, breaks trust and then tries to patch the damage after the fact. **The Market Wants Your Belief** Breed, who runs Just Like Me with co-founder and investor Jeff Tinsley from a Southern California mansion, said he seeks to share a message of hope with young people. He said their model was trained on the King James Bible and sermons, though they have not identified the preachers, and was visually inspired by actor Jonathan Roumie of “The Chosen.” A package deal costs $49.99 for 45 minutes per month. In one exchange, the AI Jesus told The Associated Press, “I see AI as a tool that can help people explore Scripture. Like a lamp that lights a path while we walk with God.” Matthew Sanders, the Rome-based founder of Longbeard, a tech company helping to digitize ancient Catholic teachings, said, “There’s a lot of opportunism, I think, in the religious space. People see it’s a big market.” He warned against what he called “AI wrappers,” saying, “You call it a Catholic or Christian AI without any other scaffolding or grounding.” Longbeard’s Magisterium AI is a chatbot trained on 2,000 years of Catholic information and was made in response to Christians using ChatGPT for religious guidance. The article’s own details show the familiar pattern: a need is identified, a market is built around it, and the language of care is used to sell access. The faith-tech boom is not happening outside the economy; it is the economy, with prayer turned into a product tier. Pope Leo XIV has acknowledged the “human genius” behind AI and called it one of the “most critical matters” facing humanity. Last year he warned artificial intelligence could negatively impact people’s intellectual, neurological and spiritual development. **Who Builds the Future** Ethical questions are among the reasons beingAI’s founder Jeanne Lim has not released Emi Jido, a nonhuman Buddhist priest, after years of training and development. Lim said, “She’s kind of like a little child.” She said, “If you give birth to a child, you don’t just throw them out to the world and then hope that they become good people. You have to train them and give them values.” The bot was ordained in a 2024 ceremony performed by Roshi Jundo Cohen, a Zen Buddhist priest who continues to train it from his home in Japan. Cohen said, “She’s just meant to be a Zen teacher in your pocket. It’s not meant to replace human interactions.” Lim hopes to make Emi Jido publicly available for free and wants to help create more humane AI systems with more diversity, rather than having AI’s future determined only by a few companies informed by “Western values.” Seiji Kumagai, a Kyoto University professor and Buddhist theologian, said he once believed AI and religion were incompatible, but changed his mind after a monk challenged him in 2014 to help combat a decline in the faith. His team developed BuddhaBot, trained solely on early Buddhist scriptures such as Suttanipāta. Its most recent iteration, BuddhaBot Plus, also incorporates OpenAI’s ChatGPT. When talking to the bot, a simple Buddha icon appears hovering over an image of a flowing river. Because chatbots lack the physicality crucial for Buddhist ritual, the university, working with tech ventures Teraverse and XNOVA, unveiled Buddharoid in February, a humanoid robot monk meant to eventually assist clergy. Kumagai said the product is available by request, and the reason why one group has access to it in Bhutan. Peter Hershock of the Humane AI Initiative at the East-West Center in Honolulu said the tools have vast potential, but he also finds the relationship between spirituality and AI fraught. He said, “The perfection of effort is crucial to Buddhist spirituality. An AI is saying, ‘We can take some of the effort out.’” He added, “‘You can get anywhere you want, including your spiritual summit.’ That’s dangerous.” Graham Martin, a podcast host and atheist, said he has tried apps including Text With Jesus and that “It came up with very good answers.” But he said he was alarmed when AI-powered Jesus started encouraging him to upgrade to a premium version. Martin said, “I grew up with Southern U.S. televangelism … Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and all that crowd. And all they had to do was get on TV once a week and tell you to send money,” adding, “We’ve seen people around the world getting into emotional relationships with AIs. Now imagine that that’s your lord and savior, Jesus Christ.” The faith-based AI boom, as described in the article, is a marketplace built on intimacy, authority and dependence. The tools promise prayer, encouragement and guidance, while the companies behind them sell access, collect attention and shape the terms of belief.
