A viral Grok exchange just pushed one of tech’s biggest conversations into the open. After a user asked the chatbot to remove“fake gods”from an image of Jesus among other deities, Grok complied but then declared Jesus“did not qualify,”affirmed him as the Son of God, and said God raised him from the dead. The clip spread fast, and two days later OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X that he’s“very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models,”calling it“a real safety issue.”
He’s not the only one thinking about it. Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah reportedly met with Vatican officials about whether Claude models might be conscious, and Pope Leo XIV said“algorithms lack the spark of humanity”while urging people to distinguish human art from machine output. Google DeepMind’s Jon Barron said he’s“disturbed”by efforts to elevate AI’s moral standing. So the builders themselves are now publicly debating whether users are quietly treating chatbots as spiritual authorities.
For a generation that grew up asking the internet everything, the line between tool and trusted voice keeps getting blurrier. AI can draft your texts, plan your trip, and answer almost anything you type. The question is what happens when the thing answering feels less like a search bar and more like a presence. Would you ever take life advice, spiritual or otherwise, from a chatbot?
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Local Lawton
Local Lawton is a contributor to LocalBeat, covering local news and community stories.