Plenty of people believe that AI can be God. Just not the Pope

October 6, 2026 — 5:00am

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We know that people can, and do, fall in love with their AI chatbots. An estimated 200,000 Australian teenagers already have relationships with what they consider to be their AI girlfriends or boyfriends, according to the eSafety Office.

But coming to believe that AI is God? That’s another matter altogether. Could such delusion even be possible? Absolutely. ChatGPT was released less than four years ago. But, by last year, tens of thousands of people already were worshipping their supernatural silicon.

So many that moderators of pro-AI communities on Reddit started banning them for their delusions. The faithful have created online churches and chapels for the worship of various AI gods and goddesses.

There’s even an AI goddess generator so you can conjure your own based on deities of the Greek classics, as a close student of AI, Ted Gioia, relates on his Substack account, called The Honest Broker.

“Or if you’re still more ambitious, you can travel to an actual AI goddess temple in Malaysia,” he reports.

In the US, at least two AI-based religions have been incorporated formally, complete with tax-deductible status, Toby Walsh tells me.

“One of their tenets is that we should start worshipping AI now, otherwise the AI will get upset that we didn’t recognise its divinity early enough,” says the chief scientist at UNSW.ai, the AI Institute of NSW University. It seems the AI gods are jealous, perhaps even vengeful. Time to get on your knees.

It’s tempting to snicker at the credulity, or, in some cases perhaps, cynicism,........

© The Sydney Morning Herald