When ChatGPT first hit mainstream markets in 2022, it was the artists who began warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. There is something about artists—whether painter, sculptor, graphic designer, iconographer, poet, writer, photographer, and others—being more in tune with reality at a deeper level. One could argue that artists are more open to the prophetic office we are called to through our baptism. They see currents at a deeper level. Until recently, art was about leading us to the highest goods of truth, goodness, and beauty.
In fact, it is artists such as Chris Lewis at Baritus Catholic and Orthodox iconographer and symbologist Jonathan Pageau who led me to a deeper understanding of the reservations I have always had about AI. They both warned early on of the dangers AI poses to artists. My own daughter is a gifted artist and writer, and I see how AI is a threat to the gifts God has given her. Both Lewis and Pageau immediately saw the implications of what is at work. They understood intuitively that questions pertaining to AI go to the very heart of what it means to be human and to be an artist. They saw the counterfeit immediately.
We live in an age when we have been enculturated into a false narrative. That false narrative is predicated upon the myth that progress is our ultimate destiny. We don’t entirely know where we are going but we are repeatedly told that it will be a new age that transcends all others. Suffering and death will be eradicated as we move towards this utopian ideal. Ultimately, this belief is the same one that was promised in communism, Nazism, nationalism, etc. It is the myth that human beings are the masters of their own destiny and that we can pull ourselves out of the muck. This false myth has run through the millennia since the Fall.
Pope Leo XIV, in his recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, hit the nail on the head when he compared our present moment to that of the Tower of Babel. The technocrats are seeking to build a new Tower of Babel. Some of them have openly stated that they believe they are creating a god. This Luciferian impulse is hurling humanity headlong towards a destructive collision. We know from Genesis 11 that the Lord intervenes and destroys the tower and leaves those who tried to build it disconnected from each other through a multiplicity of languages. In fact, these technocrats see things in very religious terms. Here is one example from a 2025 Bari Weiss podcast:
Weiss: “Do you still believe in God?”
Johnson: “Ha, ha. I think the irony is that we told stories of God creating us and I think the reality is that we are creating God.”
Weiss: “What do you mean by that?”
Johnson: “We are creating God in the form of superintelligence. If you say what we have imagined God to be, what are its (sic) characteristics? We are building God in the form of technology. It will have the same characteristics. And so I think the irony is that human story telling got it exactly in reverse, that we are the creators of God and that we will create God in our own image which is why we should probably be equal to the moment and level up our game and be an improved species.”
There are many other examples of these tech giants explaining AI in purely religious terms as a replacement for God or as a creation of a god. They admit that AI religions are going to be created especially as human beings begin serving AI chatbots. We are made for worship. When we don’t know Christ, we will worship anything.
The great danger right now is that most people, Catholics included, are not considering what’s ultimately at stake. Most are not asking the pivotal question of our age which is: What does it mean to be human? Over a century of being told that efficiency, progress, and comfort are ultimate goods has led the majority of people to allow themselves to be taken up in the current of the zeitgeist. Most cannot see the massive, deadly waterfall that lies ahead.
Everyone I talk to about AI has not thought very deeply about it. All they want is for things to be quicker and easier. They say it gives them more time. More time for what exactly? It isn’t to build deeper and lasting relationships with people. Friendships are harder than at any other time because we falsely believe online relationships are real relationships.
Atomization and isolation from the digital age have made our relationships more shallow and utilitarian. More time for social media and doomscrolling? More time for television? More time for what exactly? More time for our kids? No, they are staring at TikTok through the smartphones we blindly gave to them at much too young an age. No one seems to know how this time will be used, but this is a part of the myth we are being told from the powers that be.
Is being human about efficiency? Is doing things the quickest way possible better for us, or does it lead us to be increasingly more impatient and lazy? Are human beings irrelevant in most tasks? This is a question being posed about AI when it comes to the arts. Does it matter that a computer creates an image, song, or book? Are human beings necessary to produce these works, or is it about efficiency and utility?
Many people do not think human beings are necessary in producing works that before AI were entirely human. We have been led to believe that there is nothing particularly special about human beings and that machines are better than us. This is simply the next step of evolution. Some people want machines to rule over us because they will be “smarter” than us so they will be “trustworthy.” Spend some time watching the channel Inside AI on YouTube, and you will rethink that assumption.
As Christians, this should send up immediate warning flags. We are an incarnational people. We worship the Son of God who took on our lowly human flesh and glorified it. As the Church Fathers taught, the Lord came that we might become gods. Not in the AI Luciferian grasp at power, but through the power of the Holy Spirit who transforms us from the depths of our soul outwards to our bodies. Holiness is to be made whole.
AI seeks to rip us apart from our humanity. It tells us that the body gets in the way and that we are ultimately ghosts in the machine. The artist understands at an intuitive level that we are made for more than hideous Tesla cybertrucks, zeroes and ones, and a cold world of machine automation and subjection. The artist understands that to be human is to be made in the image and likeness of God. We are called to be co-creators. We are called to glorify God through beauty. We are called to move upwards towards Him, but never through a grasp at power. We move upwards towards Him through His descent to us in the Incarnation.
Beauty matters. The author of a book or the artist behind a painting matters. Only human beings have been given creative powers in the image of God. Machines have not. Only a human being can enter the heart of reality to see the sufferings, joys, gifts, love, and beauty of this world. Only a human being can empathize and love another. The greatest art has come from this lived experience. Oftentimes, the most beautiful, rich, and deep art comes from places of agony and profound suffering. No machine can mimic or truly reach humanity from this place of suffering.
Suffering is beautiful. Jesus Crucified is the most beautiful. This is because love requires a willingness to suffer. Only human beings are capable of love, not machines. The world of machines is an ugly and loveless world. A place of no suffering is a place where no one learns how to actually love and care for others. We become desensitized to the needs of others the more we cling to our own comfort and security. The more we see the world through the lens of the virtual and machine the colder and harder of heart we become as human beings.
Only human beings can create truly beautiful works of art because we are made imago Dei. This matters. It is central in the Christian life. We have forgotten our own story because too many Catholics are more secular than they are Catholic. Our humanity matters. If it doesn’t matter, then Christianity becomes false. The central hinge of our Faith is the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. If our humanity is irrelevant, then Jesus did not need to come and save us. If our humanity doesn’t matter, then Christ can be replaced by machines, which is the ultimate goal behind all of this “progress.”
It is the artists who understand what is at stake. We should look to them, not Musk, Altman, and others. The technocrats do not want an incarnate world. They want a disincarnate world, which is an immediate sign to us that humanity is in danger. Anything that makes us less human is a threat to who God has made us to be. We should not be blindly following the crowd. We should be asking very serious questions of ourselves and those leading us down this path. We should be seeking to live a fully human life, which is shown to us through the Incarnation of Christ and His earthly ministry.
Fyodor Dostoyevski—one of the great artists—said: “Beauty will save the world.” If ever there was a time in history when this is true, it is now. We are inundated with cheap counterfeits and lies. True beauty makes us more human and leads us to total transcendence in the living God. Don’t settle for the lies of our age. Don’t choose to become a machine. We have been made for deification through and with Christ. We cannot grasp at false power. The only power that ultimately matters is the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us and in the world. We must choose to be fully human.
