In short
- Author Billy Hallowell warned that AI chatbots could become tools of the “demonic realm.”
- Many churches are instead embracing AI for preaching, services and outreach.
- Scholars argue that technology has always inspired both faith and fear – and AI is no different.
As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, could your favorite chatbot actually be a portal to hell? That is the premise of Christian journalist and influencer Billy Hallowell, who claims that AI can lead to demonic influence.
In a recent episode of After Party with journalist Emily Jashinsky, Hallowell – an author and religious commentator with 300,000 followers on Facebook and X – warned that great language models could become tools of the devil.
“The demonic realm actually uses technology quite often. This is something that came up in a lot of stories,” Hallowell said. “I’ve had a personal experience with this in my own life, where you see technology being manipulated or used.”
While Hallowell acknowledged the absurdity of his claim, he went on to say that he had come across stories of police officers and others who believed that technology had been “hijacked” during supernatural encounters.
Hallowell, whose 2020 book Playing With Fire explored modern cases of possession and exorcism, said he is very cautious about how quickly people have become attached to the technology.
“People are getting addicted to AI,” he says. “They’re creating relationships with AI, they’re looking to AI for all the answers.”
Hallowell likened that dependence to both the spiritual and intellectual decline of a culture that has become “numb, confused, and lost” and is now giving up the final act of thinking for itself.
“You know, if you are Satan, and you are the devil, the enemy, then Satan’s goal is to kill, to steal, to destroy and to confuse,” he said. “So why not use a tool that can actually communicate and talk to further those actions against the human population?”
This fear and moral panic is not new. Long before the latest AI boom with the public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, Elon Musk warned that humanity might “summon the demon.” During a speech at MIT in 2014, the head of Tesla and SpaceX compared AI researchers to a magician trying to summon a ghost.
“You know all those stories about the man with the pentagram and the holy water and he’s sure he can control the demon,” he said. “It won’t work.”
A modern moral panic
Over the centuries, new transformative technology has often had its own moral reckoning.
When the printing press appeared in 15th-century Europe, church leaders called it an instrument of heresy. Centuries later, critics claimed that telecommunications equipment, including the telegraph, radio, and television, were conduits for evil.
More recently, in the 1980s, a “Satanic panic” led parents and preachers to accuse Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal music of recruiting children to Satan’s cause. The same script played out again with violent video games and movies, which were blamed for corrupting an entire generation.
Religious commentators and theologians have increasingly linked the rise of artificial intelligence to age-old fears of spiritual corruption. In a 2024 essay titled “Can AI be possessed by demons?” Lutheran theologian Ted Peters explored whether machines can be a vessel for evil, citing Musk’s long-standing joke about “summoning the demon.” Peters concluded that while literal possession is unlikely, AI can still act “demonic” when it manipulates or harms humans.
Belief and the feedback loop
According to Joseph Laycock, associate professor of religious studies at Texas State University, this fascination with divine or infernal machines fits a well-known historical pattern.
“We’ve always had a tendency when new technology comes out, especially new communications technology, to ascribe some kind of supernatural or divine significance to it,” Laycock said. Declutter.
He traced the lineage of Greek theater’s deus ex machina – “god from the machine” – to 19th-century spiritualists who believed the telegraph could reach the dead. Early photographers claimed to capture ghosts on film; now the internet and AI are amplifying the same impulses on a large scale.
Laycock also noted how loneliness and emotional vulnerability often drive people to technologies that promise comfort or connection.
“I fear a scenario where no one thinks for themselves – they leave everything to AI – and Elon Musk gets to say whatever he needs to say,” Laycock added. “That would essentially make Elon Musk a god if he controls the program everyone relies on to define reality.”
Laycock’s fears could be the ultimate irony, with Musk not only warning of the demons of AI but building the altar that summons them.
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