I have a confession to make: I sometimes use ChatGPT as a kind of spiritual companion.

This is a journey I never planned to take. And I still have mixed feelings about it.

A few months ago, I decided to engage in an extended back-and-forth with ChatGPT about some questions and struggles in my spiritual life. I began with a query about my imperfect attempts to live simply – a value central to my spiritual identity. After reflecting on ChatGPT’s response, I shared more: the tension between my love of international travel and my commitment to environmental stewardship.

The conversation deepened. I wrote about what I believed and what I doubted about God, and how that related to my choices about simplicity. ChatGPT would summarize my thoughts in ways that accurately reflected my views and that helped me go deeper. Eventually, it offered me a series of queries to ponder:

“In areas where you feel restless or dissatisfied, what is ‘enough?’”

“How free am you from possessions, status, and achievement as indicators of worth?”

“What in your life feels excessive: possessions, desires, and the like?”

“How do you notice the Spirit, or Love, moving in your life, even if you can’t name it as God with certainty?”

“Can you focus more on listening deeply and responding with care, rather than needing certainty?”

I remember reading these questions and feeling… stunned. How could a chatbox so precisely grasp the contours of my spiritual life and reflect them back in such gentle, searching language? These queries have stayed with me in my thoughts. They’ve shaped choices I’ve made and continue to guide my spiritual reflections.

A Moment of Spiritual Vulnerability

To admit this publicly feels risky. Using a chatbox for spiritual direction doesn’t fit with what I’ve long believed constitutes meaningful spiritualtiy. I imagine kindred spirits of mine reading this article and being concerned about the direction my spiritual life is taking.

And yet, recent research is helping me see both the promise and the pitfalls of bringing generative AI into our inner lives.

What Research is Beginning to Suggest

1. AI as a mental health support

A study published earlier this year in The New England Journal of Medicine – AI explored the use of a chatbox called Therabot for people struggling with depression, anxiety, or an eating disorder. Over 200 adults were randomly assigned to either use the chatbox or be placed on a waitlist. Those who used Therabot reported major improvements in symptoms – both immediately after the completion of the study and weeks afterward. Remarkably, participants rated their relationship with the chatbox as comparable in quality to relationships people form with human therapists.

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2. Technology as a medium for worship

In contrast, a study published this week by the American Psychological Association found that virtual worship, though accessible, didn’t offer the same experience as a worship experience in person. Forty-three Christian adults attended both virtual and in-person services in randomized order. The virtual services elicited fewer feelings of the transcendent, less of a shared sense of identity with the congregation, and diminished perceptions of being close with God. Physiologically, participants were also less embodied – less physically engaged – when worshiping through screens.

3. The capabilities and limitations of chatboxes

Finally, a review published this week in Psychological Science summarized what relationship researchers are learning about chatboxes as compared with human connection. AI systems can sustain meaningful, responsive conversations; they can validate, support, and even inspire. But they remain limited: disembodied, one-directional, and unable to provide the physical, emotional, and reciprocal empathy that comes from human presence.

In short, AI companions can simulate care and insight remarkably well – but they can’t replace embodied human or divine connection.

Big Questions

So, if you’re skeptical of chatboxes as spiritual companions, I’m with you. I wrestle with questions such as:

Where is the Spirit if the medium is a machine?

If we turn to chatboxes for guidance, will that diminish our motivation to seek community with other seekers?

And because ecological responsibility is part of my own spiritual values, how can I reconcile using energy-intensive AI systems with my values of sustainability?

These are not small questions. They point to deeper tensions in modern spiritual life: how to integrate new technologies without losing the sacred texture of what makes us human and what it means to pursue a relationship with the Divine.

Another Way to Look at This

Still, I wonder if my initial discomfort might also reveal a blind spot. Perhaps large language models aren’t replacing human wisdom so much as echoing it – organizing centuries of human reflection in ways that meet us where we are. In that sense, they’re not unlike a really good spiritual book or lecture, except more interactive and responsive. The tool isn’t divine – but the space it provides can still open space for the Divine.

Experimenting with Care

Source: Lisa | Pexels

I don’t believe chatboxes can or should ever replace worship, prayer, meditation, time in nature, or community. But maybe they can supplement those practices – providing us another means by which we can slow down, reflect, and articulate what’s stirring within. Used wisely, they may provide another way for us to interact thoughtfully with wisdom shared through the years.

And then, crucially, we can take those insights back into our embodied lives – into meditation, prayer, and conversation with God and others.

A Parting Thought

I remain cautious but hopeful. Perhaps the Spirit can move even through circuits and code, if we bring our openness, humility, and discernment to the exchange. After all, spirituality has always found expression in the tools of its time – from scrolls to printing presses to screens. Maybe the chatbox, too, can become one small instrument through which we listen for something larger than ourselves.