God, Human, Machine: Images and Imaginaries of Religion in the Age of AI

Fouad Gehad Marei & Christoph Günther

• Tino Grisi (Politecnico di Milano), The "How" of the Rite: AI-Generated Polyhedral Synthesis and the New Imagery of Ecclesial Spaces 

• Nesrine Mansour (University of Colorado Boulder), tba

• Isobel Dickson (Dublin City University), Envisioning Artificial Intelligence: Mysticism, AI Ethics, and the Religious Imaginary of Starmirror 

• Wajeeha Naween (Bahria University Karachi Campus), The Ghost in The Pen: AI, Barakah and the Future of Islamic Calligraphy 

• Barbara Denuelle (University of Kent), Seeing with the Eye of the Heart: Sufi Epistemology, Visual Imagination, and AI-Generated Images

• Fitri Murfianti (Leiden University), Seeing the Unseen: AI Images, Digital Miracles, and the Remaking of Religious Imagination in Indonesia 

Pandora’s Black Box: Techno-Orientalist Images of the Prophet Muhammad in the Age of AI 

Abstract:

Flickering on TikTok, a video satirically takes up the challenge to show images of the Prophet Muhammad by parading a series of empty gilt frames with the closing mantra: “AI don’t want no fatwa.” This tongue-in-cheek reel offers scathing commentary on the fears of tech entrepreneurs to tackle the subject, lest physical violence (or loss of revenue) ensue. Frequently relinquished as black box non-outputs due to AI’s self-proclaimed “sensitivity to Muslims,” historical Islamic depictions of the Prophet are thus willfully engineered into digital extinction. However, in other instances, generative AI can and does produce images of the Prophet based on various visual prompts and keywords, including “Islamic” and “historical.” The results, which emerge from a limited image corpus and imperfect training models, yield an uncanny conjunction of digital automation and Orientalist imagery. Such visuals prove highly innovative if somewhat unsettling in their “techno-Orientalist” look and language—crafting, as it were, an aesthetics of visual incommensurability, even gibberish. From reaffirming perceived doctrinal and regulatory norms through image censorship to opening wide open Pandora’s image box, it becomes clear that today’s AI-generated images of the Prophet Muhammad navigate between presence and absence as well as historicity and bias, whose flimsy or even baseless theologies issue a larger epistemic provocation when it comes to presenting and policing faith, along with its key visuals, in an age of boundless mechanization.

• Efstathios Kessareas (University of Erfurt), Reimagining Hellenic Polytheism through AI: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Power 

• Rasool Akbari (University of Bonn),  Ambivalences of AI-Rendered Iranian Cultural Imaginaries: A Case Study of the Sun and the Lion 

• Kathrin Trattner (University of Zurich), “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” The role of generative AI in the digital martyrdom of Charlie Kirk 

• Jan Philipp Hahn (Evangelische Zentralstelle für Weltanschauungsfragen Berlin), Visualizing Divine Authority: The Persuasive Power of AI-Imagery in Interreligious Online Debates 

•  Feeza Vasudeva / Katja Valaskivi (University of Helsinki), Godbots and Religious Mediation: An Exploratory Study of Religious AI Interaction

•  Sofia Tsourlaki (SOAS University of London), Reclaiming Revelation: Use AI to Visualise Qur’anic Meanings Beyond the Authority of the ʿUlamāʾ

Cave of Dreams: Designing Ethical AI Worlds for the Study of Religion and Human Responsibility 

Abstract

Religions once built temples and myths to explore the human condition. Today we are beginning to build interactive worlds where those questions can be explored in real time. Many assume that artificial intelligence will simply generate these environments for us, replacing human imagination with automated systems. That assumption is mistaken. The moral challenge of AI is not technological capability but human responsibility. Humans must not surrender moral imagination to artificial intelligence; instead, we must design the environments in which AI operates so that human values, reflection, and ethical accountability remain at the center. Cave of Dreams is a transdisciplinary research project that develops immersive narrative environments in Unreal Engine where generative AI participates in real-time dialogue and environmental interaction. These environments function as experimental laboratories for studying identity formation, moral reasoning, and human–AI collaboration. By bringing together the humanities, computer science, architecture, music, and simulation science, the project investigates how AI-mediated worlds reshape cultural imagination and the ways humans encounter enduring religious questions. 

• Thowhidul Islam / Nurul Amin / Iftekharul Islam (International Islamic University Chittagong), Between Khayāl and Code: Artificial Intelligence and the Islamic Philosophy of Imagination 

• Arulchelvan Sriram (Anna University), From Darshan to Dataset: AI-Generated Divine Images & the Transformation of Seeing in Hindu Practice in Tamil Nadu 

• Kris Ramlan (Goethe University Frankfurt), Artificial Imagination? Ibn ʿArabi’s Ontology of the Imaginal and AI-Generated Presence 

• Murtala Ibrahim (Free University of Berlin), Machines of the Final Hour: AI as Eschatological Portent in West African Islam 

• Katharina Yadav / Feeza Vasudeva (Univeristy of Zurich / University of Helsinki), Aesthetics and (Religious) Imagination in Hindu and Christian AI Images 

• Babak Rahimi (UC San Diego), AI Karbala: Artificial Visuality, Shiʿi Mourning, and Futurity  

• Christoph Günther (University of Erfurt), “Your first day in jannah” vs. “POV: you wake up in jahannam”: AI Images of Paradise and Hell 

• Maria Majorie Purino (University of San Carlos), Hsing Yun’s Humanistic Buddhism: Cultivating AI & Digital Humanities 

• Myra Abubakar (National University if Singapore), Selective Legacy 2.0: AI-Generated Imagery and the Algorithmic Curation of Postcolonial Islamic Memory 

• Mohamad Zreik (Sun Yat-Sen University), AI and the Revival of Confucianism: Virtual Teachings and Moral Imagery in Contemporary China