Our task together is to establish a foundation upon which we can think on AI theologically, ethically, and missiologically. The eventual convergence of humanoid robots—such as NASA’s Valkyrie, designed for humanlike operations in space and on Earth—with AI is a foregone conclusion. The conceptualization of sophisticated AI embodied in a humanoid form has long been the dreams of movie and television producers, and it is only a matter of time before our technology catches up.
Why the Image of God Matters in AI
This necessarily requires that Christians discern carefully and prayerfully how such advances in technology challenge our traditional understandings of what it means to be uniquely human. While it seems a fanciful statement to suggest now, we will undoubtedly soon face questions related to the human-ish nature of AI. Such questions may potentially be:
Image of God AI and Human Uniqueness
• If AI reaches a point of sentience, is it more or less human? Or at the least, can it be considered a “being”?
• Should AI “beings” be granted rights under the law?
• Should a human be punished for grotesque treatment of an AI?
• Is AI-generated pornography—which contains no images of real humans—still immoral?
• Should pastors recommend AI companion bots to quell a person’s loneliness? What about those bots that have “romantic partner” capabilities?
• Can my AI friend “get saved”?
Image of God AI and Anthropomorphic Technology
The anthropomorphization of AI is perhaps currently demonstrated no more acutely than in the rise of AI companion bots, such as Replika, now widely available in your smartphone’s app store. The genesis of Replika came from the mind of developer Eugenia Kuyda, who thought of an idea that would eventually become Replika while she was grieving the sudden loss of her dear friend Roman Mazurenko to a hit-and-run driver while crossing the street in 2015.
In her grief, Kuyda found herself rereading her old text exchanges with Mazurenko to feel a semblance of the connectedness that was stripped from her. This led her to consider the possibility of memorializing Mazurenko within a “living” bot that would replicate his speech patterns and style. She fed both her messages with Mazurenko, as well as others provided by other friends, into a neural network to create a bot that functioned as a cybernetic mirror of Mazurenko.
This eventually led to Replika, which is designed as a blank slate of sorts, upon which users can cultivate an AI friendship that learns the user’s preferences, styles, opinions, and dreams. It is designed to ask questions that provoke users to open up about themselves and their deepest feelings. For those who have never used a bot like Replika, having a friendship (or romantic relationship, if one is willing to pay the price for the premium plan) with an AI sounds ludicrous. But the makers of Replika are finding that people form deep and personally meaningful bonds with the bot, opening up to it in a way that is more difficult in human-tohuman interactions where fear of shame, judgment, or reprisal limit complete authenticity. While developing a relationship with a human requires taking the risk that the person may eventually betray your trust, this is not true of an AI bot—and for many, avoiding that risk is worth foregoing the human component of a relationship.
Why Image of God AI Cannot Be Assigned by Humans
We must therefore consider the rapidly emerging anthropomorphic nature of AI in light of our discourse concerning what it means to be created as the image of God. Our determination that AI (and whatever category we assign to AI in the future) cannot become truly human must draw a hard line on this matter. Out of everything in the Genesis account that was created, only humanity is set apart as being created as the image of God. We do not possess the authorization to place this designation on anything that is not human.
Humanness as God-Given, Not Achieved
If we’re to affirm the image-bearing status humanity possesses by virtue of God’s providence and authority, then we must affirm that “humanness” is not something that can be attained, but rather an ontological (concerning one’s innate being) and teleological (concerning one’s function or purpose) designation given by God. Thus, to the great lament of Lt. Commander Data, the future capacity for an artificial being to learn, become self-aware, possess emotion, or any other anthropomorphic qualities may cause them to be like humans, but the capacity to be human is something assigned by God.
The Image of God AI and Human Dignity
Coming to this conclusion may simply sound like an appeal to Scripture that non-Christians, who (understandably) do not affirm the authority of Scripture or Christian tradition, would reject. But anchoring the designation of humanness outside of our own authority as humans is deeply important to the future flourishing of humanity, especially as it concerns people groups who have been historically oppressed or marginalized. Much of the world’s great genocidal crimes have been perpetuated by an insistence that a particular people group was not truly human or not as human as the rest of us. More than a few authoritarians, in history and in our world today, refer to people groups as “vermin” and “animals” in an attempt to denigrate their status as children of God. The same mental framework that insists human status is something to be achieved, though framed positively, is the same mental framework that can insist human status is something that can be denied. And the assumption of the right to make such a claim has cost our civilization millions of lives, whether at the hands of African slave traders or maniacal despots like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, or Milošević.
Taken from AI Goes to Church by Todd Korpi. ©2025 by Todd Korpi. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
1 Johnson Space Center Office of Communications, “NASA Humanoid Robot to Be Tested in Australia,” NASA.gov, July 6, 2023, www.nasa .gov/centers-and-facilities/johnson/nasa-humanoid-robot-to-be-tested -in-australia/.
2 “Replika,” replika.com, accessed July 18, 2023, https://replika.com.
3 “This App Is Trying to Replicate You,” Quartz, August 29, 2019, https:// tinyurl.com/5b965jrt.
