Beware AI-Generated Christian Content

New technologies like AI are bound to usher in new, unexpected problems. Now, I’m personally optimistic about the future of AI. I have been impressed watching it improve even over the last few years as the technology progresses and people find new and creative ways to use it. But any new technology will have growing pains. The internet has been a great blessing to humanity, but it’s also been a source of great evil. As we find ourselves increasingly in the age of AI, we must brace ourselves for new threats we might not even have thought. I want to point one out today: beware of AI-generated Christian content.

Recently, someone in a Facebook group I was in pointed out a book on systematic theology that was for sale on Amazon. Their reason for pointing it out was that the book seemed to be pretty clearly AI-generated. I clicked on it to get a good look, and as I kept clicking I began to realize that not only did someone write an AI-generated book on systematic theology, but multiple people had the same great idea (or one person kept coming out with new versions of the product so that they could corner the market). In fact, if you search for “52-week systematic theology” on Amazon you will get dozens of hits on books that all say “52-week systematic theology” somewhere in the title, have no real author or an author that is almost certainly AI-generated, all the ones I saw have been published since January 1, 2026, and when you read them they just sound AI. Many of them have dozens of 5-star ratings from what certainly appears to be bots who spend a lot of time giving AI books five star ratings.

I then had a coworker ask my opinion on something he saw on Facebook, and it became clear that it was also an AI-generated post designed to sell… wait for it… a 52-week systematic theology book! This made me realize it might be worth getting the word out on this. Now, tomorrow it might be something else that has been generated by AI—a post, an article, a different kind of Christian book. So rather than just warn against 52-week systematic theologies (for legal purposes I’m going to include here that I don’t know for sure that these were all AI-generated, but they sure look like it), I thought this would be a good chance to talk about AI-generated Christian content in general.

 

Legitimate uses of AI for Christian Content

Before I begin, I want to point out that AI can be useful in some limited ways when it comes to producing Christian content. I’ve used most of these options at some level, so I want to make clear the kinds of things that AI can be good at.

Research for writing new content

I was at a conference a few months back where a Christian scholar mentioned using AI to quickly look up references in patristic literature to a particular issue he was writing on. Now, he could have done it the old way by reading those books himself, or by using a resource that collects that information for him. But instead, he did a quick search on an AI platform that pulled several helpful quotes for his book.

I have no problem with this, in fact I’ve done it myself on occasion, looking for verses or the source of a particular illustration for example. It’s important to always double check the answers you are given (this scholar checked each reference and found that the last one was wrong, in fact). But using AI as a way to more efficiently search for material seems like a useful way to help Christian writers.

Iterating content

I don’t think there is an ethical problem if you upload your own writing to AI to create alternative versions of it, say as a social media post or to create other forms of the content. Creating a summary of your message based on its transcript for YouTube strikes me as a legitimate use. Here at Proclaim and Defend, we use AI to turn messages into blog posts. We always double check the final product with the speaker, and we always state that the post is AI-generated. To me, this all seems like a helpful way to use AI.

Editing content

Probably close to half of my conversations with AI are me asking AI to proofread my writing. Normally this is just catching mistakes, but at times I’ve asked it to reword a clunky sentence that just wasn’t working. Again, this seems like a good way to use AI.

There may be other legitimate uses that I haven’t thought of, but this seems like a good list about the kinds of things AI is good at. Perhaps I could sum it up best this way: AI can make a helpful research assistant (so long as you double check everything), but I don’t think AI is a good author. Why? Glad you asked.

 

Why Does It Matter?

So who cares? Why should people care if Gemini or Claude or ChatGPT? Is there a problem with this? Yes, I do think this is a problem, for at least the following reasons.

Dishonesty is a red flag.

There is an interesting discussion that could be had about the heavy use of AI to produce Christian content, if the publishers were up front. It would be one thing if they told you, “This is an AI-generated book on prayer.” Maybe even pitch it as such, “Check out our new book produced with the latest, cutting-edge AI-software! Distilled from the thoughts of some of the greatest prayer warriors of the last century!” I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with that, for reasons I will go into below. But that is not the current state of play. Right now we have individuals/companies churning out AI products and trying to make them look like they are written by real people. Nothing about them explicitly says they are AI-generated, but everything about them implicitly screams that they are AI-generated.

Lying is Satan’s domain. Lying and murder are closely connected by our Lord, because Satan was a liar and a murderer (John 8:44). I realize that sounds intense, and it probably is. But if you are being dishonest with people to sell Christian content, something is really off. In fact, I would argue that there is something sinful and wrong about it. If you are going to present me with a book as if a person wrote it knowing full well it came from a machine, I’m not going to buy it and I don’t think anyone else should either.

AI doesn’t know anything.

I know that probably sounds like an attack, but it’s not. I’m not trying to be mean; it’s just true. AI doesn’t know anything. AI is a giant probability machine, stacked on top of other probability machines, that in the end guesses what the right answer would be based on unfathomably large reams of data. This is why AI can sound so smart one minute and the next get a detail wrong. We might wonder how something so smart could make such a dumb mistake, and the answer is that AI isn’t smart, or dumb. It’s not thinking, it’s running probabilities.

This matters for us because when someone is writing Christian content, they are writing about God. When we allow something that cannot even think to simply give us the average of what everyone is saying, we are cutting out the all-important guidance of the Holy Spirit in directing the writer. This is not to say that Christian authors never get things wrong, but writing is supposed to be the exploration of ideas. It’s supposed to be an image bearer thinking out loud. To be taught Christian truth through the impersonal writing of a machine strikes me as eerily dystopian.

AI is not creative.

Again, this is a statement of fact, not a dig at AI. Since AI doesn’t know anything, it therefore can’t think for itself and come up with new ideas. AI can never do anything but regurgitate what is already out there. Perhaps you find yourself thinking, “I don’t know. ChatGPT seems pretty creative to me.” Perhaps, there’s a certain kind of creativity that AI can have. AI can write a poem about bubble gum in the register of a Shakespearean tragedy. That is a kind of creativity. But AI can’t think new and creative thoughts about God. AI can put words and ideas together, but it won’t come up with helpful new observations, because it’s not human. It can tell you what 100 different thinkers said about prayer, but it can’t relate its own experience or think something new about prayer.

While there is no doubt a place for AI summaries, as mentioned above, when it comes to reading there is something genuine and authentic about books written by people. God created us to be creative, and while AI can be creative in certain ways, it cannot be insightful. Spend your time reading from authors who have put in the work to think hard, to make good judgments, and to explain their ideas well. Doing so will, I believe, be much more profitable than reading a surface-level skimming of what is already available out there on a given topic.

 

How Do I Avoid AI-Generated Content?

So let’s say I’ve convinced you. You want to make sure books you read and articles you come across are written by people with flesh and blood. How do you do that?

Purchase from known authors and known publishers

As of right now, no major Christian publishers that I am aware of are publishing books written entirely by AI. Classic publishers like Zondervan, Crossway, IVP, Moody, Tyndale House, and other publishers connected to specific ministries that you know and trust should be safe. That doesn’t mean everything they publish is helpful or even true, but it does mean it’s not been written by AI.

Similarly, if you see a book written by a known author, such as John MacArthur, Paul Tripp, or Wayne Grudem, then so long as they actually wrote that book you should be safe. Once again, that doesn’t mean everything they write is true. You should always read carefully and critically. But it does mean that you are not getting an AI-generated book.

Purchase and read from unknown authors only if you can find real information about them

This is true for other things as well. I am increasingly skeptical of posts online that are anonymous, or that come from an account that isn’t connected to a flesh and blood person. Often such posts catch my eye, but I’m beginning to sense that’s because they’re algorithm driven, not because they are genuine people who are resonating with their neighbors. If you find a book that sounds interesting, see who wrote it. If you can find some basic details about them that seem to make sense, great. If you can’t, I would steer clear.

Develop a personal AI detector

We’ve had AI for close to five years now, believe it or not. Personally, I have found that the longer we have had it, the more sensitive I have become to it. It’s almost a sixth sense. Some might call it paranoia. At times I’ve perhaps been overcritical. But on the whole, I think I’m beginning to be able to spot AI more easily. Maybe that’s something that will change as AI improves over time, or maybe that’s a bug baked into the system that we will never be able to get out. But for the time being, have a sense of skepticism and caution. If something seems a little AI-y, check into it further.

 

AI is here and it’s here to stay. There’s a lot of good coming from it, and there’s a lot of problems coming as well, some we haven’t even thought of. It does seem like we’re on the precipice of the AI-generated Christian content tidal wave, but only if it works. If people are careful, if they stick to known authors and writers, and if they refuse to incentivize those turning out AI-slop, then maybe the lack of profit will be the end of the rising tide. In any case, we need to learn how to live with AI now, and part of that seems to be recognizing and rejecting AI-generated Christian content.