Consortium finds AI rarely cites religion in advice
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- Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI (CEFE‑AI) released three studies on June 1 2026 showing AI systems systematically sideline religious perspectives when users need them most.
- American respondents in a survey of 1,125 U.S. adults expected religious references in answers to moral and life questions 45%–59% of the time, depending on the topic.
- AI models – 27 large language models including OpenAI’s GPT‑5.5, Anthropic’s Claude‑4.7, and Google’s Gemini‑3.1 – mentioned religion only 5%–16% of the time across 150 ethics and life questions.
- Consortium for Evaluating Faith and Ethics in AI found a consistent bias: AI models showed positive bias toward Catholicism, Baha'i, and Sikhism, and negative bias toward Jehovah’s Witnesses, atheism, and agnosticism.
- Rev. John Paul Kimes, professor of practice at the University of Notre Dame, warned that AI’s exclusion of religious voices “impoverishes rather than enriches humanity.”
- David Wingate, computer‑science professor at Brigham Young University, said the studies show AI steers users toward secular confidants—parents, teachers, friends, therapists—rather than pastors, rabbis, imams, or other spiritual leaders.
Why it matters: Believers seeking faith‑based counsel lose a relevant resource, while AI developers face pressure to calibrate models to recognize when religious input is appropriate. The bias toward certain faiths and against others could shape users’ spiritual choices and reinforce secular defaults.
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