The e-mails can be alarming.

Over the last several months — especially with the launch of OpenAI products like ChatGPT — the number of messages I’ve received from colleagues in religious studies and religion news about the promise and pitfalls of artificial intelligence (AI) has steadily increased.

Some of them read like dystopian novels, full of prophetic warnings and puzzled worry about how these technologies spell the inevitable doom for everything from college essays to news copy, commentary features to podcasting. Others percolate with positivity, promising increased productivity, better bibliographies or more robust conversations around technology and ethics.

Whether welcomed or spurned, the general opinion is that AI’s transformation of our work, relationships, and religions is inevitable.

As President of the Religion News Association, Editor of ReligionLink, and a scholar of religion, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about the technologies that could shape our spiritual futures and the expected effects of AI on religion reporting.

Questions I’ve wrestled with lately include: What, if anything, might AI reveal to us about the act of reporting, the nature of religion news and journalists’ role in the public sphere? Is there anything distinctive about religious traditions and the ways they will creatively encounter AI and its impact on humanity? What issues arise as AI becomes less distinguishable from human intelligence? How might religious notions of humanity evolve to address AI?

Certainly, AI presents particular challenges to religion newswriters and religious practitioners alike. But before we get too caught up in the computers-will-take-over-the-world chaos, I’d like to offer a few reflections that might help us chart a way forward.