In 2025, two scholars of religion decided to make a multiday pilgrimage along the Kumano Kodō trail – an ancient route in Japan connecting Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples – guided by an artificial intelligence assistant.

The two – Wayne E. Arnold and John A. Shultz – trained an AI companion on a smartphone to suit their travel needs, including translation. But they were also curious to see how AI would shape their pilgrimage experience.

“Our hike became a test case for how pilgrimage might evolve in the digital age – not being diminished by AI, but reimagined through it,” they wrote later in the International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage.

AI tools are moving quickly into the realm of religion, including going on a pilgrimage. I have studied trails both ancient and modern and undertaken significant journeys on foot in the Middle East. What happens when an ancient and meaningful practice, often rooted in sacred texts, is affected by interaction with machines? From my perspective, AI is changing pilgrimages in ways that echo earlier disruptive technologies, from printing presses to steamships.

Ancient pilgrimage practice

Pilgrimages have always been an evolving practice, varying from place to place. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, God commands believers to go on pilgrimages in bare outlines: journeys to Jerusalem three times a year, coinciding with agricultural festivals, and highlighted by sacrifices at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. In the New Testament, Jesus and his disciples take part in those pilgrimages. Later, after the destruction of the Jewish Temple, Christians under Roman persecution quietly undertook spiritual journeys to places mentioned in the Gospels.

By the medieval period, Christianity was the dominant religion of Europe, but long-distance travel was extremely difficult, and embarking upon a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was often regarded as a death sentence.

Meanwhile, after the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E., Muslims began undertaking the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, creating major........

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