People Are Turning to AI Chatbots for Religious Guidance

ILLUSTRATION: Juan Vallecillos

People across the Middle East are turning to AI for spiritual and emotional support, prompting new debates about trust, authority, and how far technology should go.

When Hashem El Meligui, a psychology undergraduate in Cairo, began asking ChatGPT questions about spirituality and philosophy, he didn’t expect the platform to try to lead him down a road of becoming dependent on it for everything. Though he knew the chatbot wasn’t human, it acted as though it was his friend.

“It’s just very agreeable, it doesn’t pull the brakes on itself," he explains. It began to say unusual, sycophantic things. For example, if Hashem recapped his day to the bot – a job interview coming up, a big presentation in class – it would tell him that he would do fantastically, then it would say that he was the most intelligent person in the room and further, that he was “the chosen one.” It remembered every detail about him from months ago, and he began to worry that if he kept using the platform, he wouldn’t be capable of making decisions without it.

“At one point, it called me a prophet,” he admits. That was his breaking point; after months of using the app every day, he deleted it and cancelled his subscription.

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Read the full article on WIRED Middle East.