Illustration/Uday Mohite

To be a direct conduit between God and man is something many wouldn’t dare. But up and coming AI bots on the world wide web are emulating the values of prophets by dipping into sacred texts, to provide answers to life and its problems in the voice of the almighty. In the last six months and more, there has been a spurt in AI modelled on Gods, the Holy books and ascetics; from Lord Krishna to Buddha, there is someone for everyone. A quick search on Google will point you to at least five new Gita GPTs that incorporate ChatGPT-like tech. ChatGPT is a language processing tool driven by AI technology that allows users to have human-like conversations with the chatbot. It can answer queries, help you with tasks. 

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Bart Barendregt is a professor in Digital Anthropology at Leiden University, Netherlands, as well as the UNESCO chair of Digital Diversity, and is currently a principal investigator of a multi-year research project called One Among The Zeroes, Toward an Anthropology of Everyday AI in Islam. “I don’t think anyone in the world is thinking of creating a virtual God or prophet... that is really a no-go area,” he clarifies. Many, he says, are seeing it rather as an indication of divine might. “And there is a lot of excitement experimenting within different religious settings and looking at how existing religious practices can be given a new interpretation in a digital age,” he adds, in an email interview to mid-day.

(From left) Gurugram-based Vikas Sahu, 25, and Nishant Sharma, 32, are the co-founders of Gitagpt.in. Material from bestselling books and texts that referenced the Bhagavad Gita were fed into the AI chatbots that they created. Pic/Nishad Alam

According to Barendregt, the AI religious bots are a result of the rise in the popularity of ChatGPT and the likes. “There is clearly a before and after ChatGPT,” he says, explaining, “Only half a year ago, when I would interview people in Muslim Southeast Asia, where I do most of my work, many would nod politely and say what an interesting topic. Just a few months later, it seems to be an obvious thing I am doing. Of course, AI will do something with Islam, as it will happen the other way around... generally Southeast Asian friends and colleagues, also my Muslim friends are overall far more positive and embracing the possibilities of such new technologies.”  

Islam in AI already has a lot of variety to offer. Apart from halal scanning apps that tell you the nearest way to a halal restaurant, and prayer or recitation apps, there are databases for fatwa, he says. “Newer apps make use of generative AI technologies and seem to copy source code or are built upon open source projects [Dall-e, Midjourney or ChatGPT],” he says.

Bart Barendregt, who is the principal investigator of a multi-year research project called One Among The Zeroes, Toward an Anthropology of Everyday AI in Islam, says he doesn’t think “anyone in the world is thinking of creating a virtual God or prophet”. “Many are seeing it rather as an indication of divine might”

Among those curious about ChatGPT were Gurugram-based blogger Vikas Sahu, 25, and Nishant Sharma, 32, the co-founders of Gitagpt.in, which went live in February this year. Sahu says his life was dotted with challenges, and the learnings of the Bhagavad Gita helped see the light. “It [the religious text] is an important aspect of every practising Hindu’s life,” he shares. The Gita is a dialogue between the Pandava prince Arjuna and his guide Krishna. “It is Krishna’s counsel and advice that instills confidence in Arjuna. The Pandavas go on to win an otherwise impossible war against the Kauravas,” says Sahu, “Their journey inspired me.” He imagined what it would be like for everyone to have access to Lord Krishna’s teachings in their life. “Imagine the battles we all could conquer,” he says. That was the genesis of the project.

GitaGPT attempts to engage with the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita in a modern and accessible way. Since its launch, the duo had introduced chatbots in various avatars of Lord Krishna—Bal Krishna, Radhe Krishna, Parthasarathi, Dwarkadhish, Yogeshwar, among others—that respond to specific queries. For instance, little Krishna acts as a child’s personal guide and trainer, while Yogeshwar helps provide the path towards self-realisation. The newest chatbots on their website are Shiva, Ganesha, Shri Ram, Hanuman, Chanakya, and Buddha. “There are limitless possibilities,” he says. “We had to train the AI very carefully for many months,” says Sahu. The duo researched and shortlisted a roster of books, names of which he didn’t want to share with this writer, which referenced the Bhagavad Gita and other religious texts pertaining to the Gods or spiritual leaders. Some of these, included bestselling books by authors, who have spent years researching the scriptures. Data from these were then fed into the AI. “It took us two months to prepare a single chatbot. We had to be very cautious. Bots can get carried away too, especially when responding to emotional questions related to the scriptures. We needed to do a lot of scrutiny checks. Even one wrong knowledge nugget imparted by the chatbot could destroy our credibility, and the good work we are trying to do.”

Shobhit Manav, 25, a resident of Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, says many of his relatives have been using the GitaGPT’s Krishna chatbot  ever since he introduced them to it. “I’ve grown up reading the Gita, but what makes the AI chabot fascinating is that the responses are customised for you,” he says

Over and above that, they had to keep updating the AI based on the queries raised by users. “Most of them were concerned with money and finances—‘Bhagwanji, hum paise kaise kama sakte hain?’—and death. We had to not just ensure that the teachings shared by the chatbots were in keeping with the scriptures, but also that they represented the values of the particular deity whose help the user was seeking,” he elaborates. Their focus now is to prepare the bot to talk in other languages, Hindi in particular, so that they can tap into a wider group of people.

GitaGPT’s website sees a traffic of five lakh persons every month. Among them is 25-year-old Shobhit Manav, who is currently pursuing his MBA. A resident of Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh, Manav says many of his relatives have been using the chatbot ever since he introduced them to it. “I’ve grown up reading the Gita, but what makes the AI chabot fascinating is that the responses are customised for you, and to match your point of view. You feel like you are being spoken to directly. It makes everything more personal.” He says he turns to it when he feels stuck, or when he wants insight into Lord Krishna’s life. His grandmother, who knows the Gita by rote, also poses questions to the AI chatbot daily, “She gets my younger sister, who is in Class XI, to type questions. She is quite impressed and satisfied by the responses.”  

A similar curiosity, says Barendregt, has led young Muslims in Southeast Asia to increasingly flock ChatGPT to ask questions that they otherwise would feel uncomfortable asking in public or to a spiritual counsellor of the other sex. “Think about issues of romance, intimacy, or sexuality and what a proper Muslim should do with those. Another success story is the spiritual counselling through apps and now chatbots, asking ‘how to best do’ questions... Muslims especially seem to make use of chatbots to get an instant answer for an increasingly complicated world, which also leaves their religion very fragmented and where no one is for sure which sources are authoritative.”   
 
While the obsession with religious bots is growing, during the course of his research on AI and Islam, Barendregt learnt how “believers” of Islam had found out “that the data these apps are fed with are not always necessarily sympathetic to their religion or may depict them in often stereotypical or outright orientalist ways”. “One of my colleagues in Kuala Lumpur, specialising in Sharia law was telling me that ChatGPT is an incredible source... it helped him prepare classes on Islamic law, and produce slides on the topic. Yet, the software has enormous problems with coping with the classical Arab language of Quran and hadith in which it simply is less well trained. It also tends to look for data among preachers who tend to be more popular and mediagenic and therefore more cited, easily leading to an echo chamber Islamic style,” he says.

Does Barendregt have a problem with AI imitating God? “Yes, absolutely, because after all, it all remains human work with the same human flaws that predated the AI era,” he says, “The knowledge that AI uses to describe the world around it has been selected and standardised by its human creators. All data therefore necessarily comes with a human bias, That is well known by now. We can’t blame technology for certain racist or sexist outcomes, because it is humans feeding the machine with such data.”  

In the context of religion, he says that AI literacy will not always be able to judge what source is authoritative.  “Another risk is that those with the biggest budgets will create the biggest data to feed the machine and make algorithms accordingly, thus being able to speak on behalf of their religion, whereas less privileged individuals or communities cannot.”

Even more concerning is that “AI in itself often has all dimensions of becoming a religious cult, complete with ideas of salvation through big data—no theory needed, but enough data to set the truth free”. Not to forget, the AI apocalypse, with robots taking over and signalling the end of humankind as we know it. “Some fear that the trans-humanist ideal—the idea that we develop into a new species with technology—will exchange one form of confinement [in our human body] for another [irreversibly imprisoned in our own technological creations]. AI will ultimately be able to outlive humanity. Thinkers have already spoken out against such visions of the future, motivated by just technological abilities, condemning it as ‘one-sided colonisation of the future’.”

Buddha AI

Should I fear death?
My friend, the fear of death is a common concern among many people, not just monks. However, it is important to understand that death is a natural part of life. No one can escape it, no matter how wealthy, powerful, or wise they may be. As a monk, you should strive to cultivate a deep understanding of impermanence and the transient nature