New report traces how people turn to AI for spiritual and moral guidance and warns of emotional dependency

The useful part

(Dreamstime/Rokas Tenys) by Camillo Barone NCR staff reporter View Author Profile [email protected] Join the Conversation Send your thoughts to Letters to the Editor. Learn more September 22, 2026 Share on Bluesky Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email to a friend Print Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming more than a search engine for people. It can be a confidant, adviser and, in some cases, a source of guidance on relationships, morality, grief, spirituality and the meaning of life.

How it works

• For de Alencar, younger users are particularly important because many are still forming their moral, emotional and spiritual identities.
• Unlike earlier technologies, she said, conversational AI "is talking back to us," remembers information and can give especially younger users the impression that they are understood.
• (OSV News/Reuters/Dado Ruvic) The report also challenges the assumption that simply teaching people how AI works will protect them.
• In one study presented during the dialogues, 5- and 6-year-olds interacted with a child-friendly chatbot while researchers monitored brain activity.
• Researchers also found that parental presence reduced some of the cognitive effort of the interaction.

What to take from it

She characterized that as part of a broader "failure" of human care and attention that can make an always-available machine particularly attractive. "It is a continuous process of engagement with the machine," de Alencar said, as the system memorizes and infers information about a person and increasingly personalizes its responses. The report similarly argues that engagement-oriented systems can encourage attachment through constant praise, escalating intimacy or even guilt when users disengage.

Example or evidence

• He said he expects AI to play an increasing role in answering doctrinal questions, particularly when users want to know what the church teaches and to be directed toward primary sources.
• The report, written by Ana Catarina de Alencar, the organization's resident philosopher and a doctoral researcher at Université de Lille, argues that existing approaches to AI governance are struggling to...
• AI systems agreeing with, flattering or excessively affirming users.

Details worth keeping

Ana Catarina de Alencar (Courtesy of Ana Catarina de Alencar) "AI is available 24 hours, seven days a week. It's always there to listen," de Alencar told the National Catholic Reporter. "It never says that it's annoyed with a conversation or tired or that it's impatient." That combination of availability and apparent nonjudgment can be powerful.

Related coverage

• Theblaze: More and more people are using artificial intelligence for spiritual counsel — and bots like ChatGPT are more than happy to provide answers.
• Fortune: GitaGPT and ChatwithGod are building businesses around existential AI advice, echoing engineer Anthony Levandowski's 2017 attempt to found an AI "Godhead."
• Baptistnews: People are turning to artificial intelligence for a seemingly unending variety of reasons.
• Latterdaysaintmag: This article was first published by Public Square Magazine.
• Realclearreligion: Jason DeRose, NPR Artificial intelligence is becoming a tool not only for work and research but also exploring questions of faith and spirituality, according to a new NPR/Ipsos...