What Does the LDS Church (Mormonism) Say About AI?

Among the world's faiths, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has staked out one of the most specific and recent positions on artificial intelligence — and it rests on a theology that draws an unusually sharp line. In December 2025 the Church added formal AI guidance to its General Handbook. The line it draws is about two things a machine cannot supply: revelation, and a body.

Does the LDS Church allow members to use AI?

Yes, used responsibly. The Handbook (section 38.8.47) permits AI for tasks like research, editing, and translation, and asks members to use it in “positive, helpful, and uplifting ways” that uphold the Church's standards. It is, in this framing, a permitted and useful tool — neither feared nor forbidden.

What can't AI do, in Latter-day Saint teaching?

The boundary is precise. AI, the Handbook says, “cannot replace the gift of divine inspiration or the individual work required to receive it.” Members are told not to lean on AI to compose talks, lessons, prayers, or blessings, nor to rely on it for medical, financial, or legal counsel. Personal revelation — the conviction that God speaks to individuals who do the work to listen — is the beating heart of the faith, and it is exactly what a machine cannot stand in for.

AI cannot replace the gift of divine inspiration.

Could AI be God in Mormonism?

No — and the Latter-day Saint reason is distinctive among religions. Their God is embodied: an exalted, glorified Being with a perfected body, and human beings are His literal children who may progress toward godhood themselves (exaltation). In that picture, a bodiless program is disqualified on every count — it has no body, no spirit, and no agency, the very things that define both God and those who might become like Him. AI isn't a lesser god; it isn't on the ladder at all.

What is the deeper LDS concern about AI?

That it quietly crowds out the two things the faith is built on: personal revelation and real relationships. The Handbook warns that interactions with AI “cannot substitute for meaningful relationships with God and others.” The worry is less that AI becomes divine and more that it becomes a convenient substitute for the slow, personal work — prayer, study, fellowship — through which Latter-day Saints believe the divine is actually met.

So the LDS verdict is a permitted tool with a hard ceiling: useful for the work of the hands, useless for the work of the soul. The Godhood Index tracks how high the tool has climbed; the religion map sets this answer beside the rest.