A surprising number of Americans use AI for spiritual reasons. Here’s what they told us

Matt Chinworth for NPR

Artificial intelligence is becoming a tool not only for work and research but also for exploring questions of faith and spirituality, according to a new NPR/Ipsos poll.

Ipsos polled 1,011 U.S. adults from Aug. 7 through Aug. 9 of this year. Overall, 61% of respondents said they have used an artificial intelligence tool, such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT, or Claude, for any purpose.

The poll found that 11% of AI users have sought spiritual guidance from artificial intelligence, while 13% have used the technology to generate prayers, and 15% say they have used it to study Scripture.

For Rudy Vazquez, AI provided an alternative when he had questions about the Bible that he felt religious leaders had failed to answer.

Vazquez, a 43-year-old construction worker who has attended a nondenominational church in Jacksonville, Fla., for the past two years, recently turned to AI after hearing a passage from Isaiah during a worship service.

“I read, you know, the Book (of) Isaiah, and never understood what it really means,” Vazquez said.

He said he had been reluctant to ask his pastor for help because of previous experiences.

“I never got an answer — like a legit answer — from them,” he said. “Sometimes I just don’t understand what he’s talking about.”

So Vazquez asked AI to explain the fifth chapter of Isaiah, a passage in which God chastises the Israelites for their moral hypocrisy. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness,” the prophet warns.

Vazquez said the response helped him understand the passage as a lesson about the choices people make between good and evil.

Vazquez is among a relatively small group of people using AI to explore religious questions. Mallory Newall, a senior vice president at Ipsos who leads polling projects, said using AI for curiosity and looking up new information is common, but relying on AI for spiritual counsel remains rarer. Nearly 7 in 10 poll respondents who use AI said they would never seek religious or spiritual guidance from AI.

“When it comes to counsel, people are still significantly more likely to turn to their family members or their friends than they are to AI,” Newall said. She says people are also more likely to ask friends and family for advice than they are to go to religious leaders.

While the number of Americans overall who are currently using AI for spiritual guidance is small — just 6% — it’s worth noting that the percentage is roughly equal to the number of Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in the U.S.

Some people use AI as a supplement to more traditional forms of religious study.

Brent Hill, a 68-year-old retired audiologist and self-described conservative Christian who attends a nondenominational church near Dallas, recently asked AI to give him various Christian views of the end times as described in the Bible.

Hill said he could then ask follow-up questions and explore particular interpretations in greater depth.

“Certainly, AI is making that so much easier with the wealth of knowledge that’s out there to be able to pull that into a concise, quick reference,” Hill said.

But Hill said he is careful not to accept AI’s answers without checking them against the Bible itself. He pointed to a passage in the New Testament book of Acts (17:11) describing people who listened to the apostle Paul but then consulted the word of God — meaning Scripture — to determine whether what he said was true.

Other users say AI can help them develop their own spiritual traditions.

Amy Wight, a transportation policy analyst in Richmond, Va., has practiced witchcraft for 30 years. She said she sometimes uses AI to find ideas for prayers, although she writes the final prayers herself.

Wight, who’s 50, recently consulted Google’s Gemini AI before installing a broom, or besom, above a door as part of a protection ritual.

She said AI gave her guidance about the order in which to bless and consecrate the besom before hanging it.

“That made me a lot more confident in an act that is critically important to protecting me and my energy and my home,” Wight said.

Wight said she appreciates the range of perspectives AI can provide. She has also used it as a kind of conversation partner when thinking through rituals.

“I’ve never been part of a coven, so now it’s not as big a deal that AI is not a human,” she said.

For some religious practitioners, however, the lack of a human partner is precisely what makes AI an intriguing — and potentially problematic — tool.

Charles Niederman, a 91-year-old retired U.S. Coast Guard officer who is active in his Southern California synagogue, is interested in using AI to explore the Jewish tradition of studying religious texts with a partner. The practice, known as chavrusa, involves studying and discussing texts with a companion.

Niederman said an AI conversation partner could change the nature of the practice because part of chavrusa involves learning to pay close attention to another person, both their insights and how they arrived at those ideas.

“You’re training yourself to listen,” he said. “So the relationship would be a little bit different if you were using it with AI.”

Niederman said he also wonders whether AI could learn from his own insights into Scripture. But he remains skeptical about putting too much trust in the technology.

He recently used AI to research the history of false messiahs in Judaism for a presentation he was giving at his synagogue. It’s a subject, he said, that the technology handled well because it helped him draw connections among different figures who claimed to be the fulfillment of religious hopes.

The technology can provide information and perspectives, he said, but deciding what to believe remains a human responsibility. For Niederman, the experience of researching false messiahs also provided a cautionary tale for anyone putting too much faith in artificial intelligence.

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