I was researching an article I was writing for Sojourners recently when I noticed something odd: The AI Overview answer that was being generated kept shifting, even though my search query did not.
For those not familiar with Google’s relatively new AI Overview technology, AI Overviews are AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of Google search results pages for certain queries. According to Google, AI Overviews use generative AI to provide quick, easy-to-read answers to Google searches by compiling information from multiple sources, including web pages, news articles, and Google’s Knowledge Graph.
In this particular instance, I was using Google’s search engine to get a sense of what had already been written about the topic I was exploring, gender in the Bible. I first typed my query into my phone’s search browser, which was linked to my personal Gmail account. I got a straightforward, if somewhat conservative, answer to the question, “What does the Bible have to say about gender?”
The Bible generally affirms a view of gender as a divinely ordained, complementary duality, typically interpreted as male and female. It acknowledges a spectrum of gender expressions, but affirms a biological and social order of male and female.
I repeated the same query the next day using the Chrome browser, where I’m logged into a Sojourners-associated account and where I’ve often read published content from Sojourners and similar publications. I was surprised by the answer I got, which seemed notably different from the first one I received, and a little closer to what Sojourners has published in the past about gender from a biblical perspective:
The Bible establishes a foundation for understanding gender, emphasizing God’s creation of humanity as male and female in His image. However, it also recognizes the complexities of gender, including intersex individuals and diverse gender expressions. Some interpretations highlight the importance of embracing one’s birth sex, while others emphasize inclusivity and acceptance of all individuals, regardless of gender presentation.
This raised alarm bells in my mind. It seemed AI Overview was changing its summary based on what it thought I wanted to read. I tried to do some research to find out if my hunch was true, but unfortunately, not much has been written about this smaller part of the broader functionality that encompasses AI Overview. This makes sense, since AI Overview didn’t become widely used until Google forced the adoption of AI Mode on users alongside the annual Google I/O conference held in late May this year.
So, out of curiosity, I asked Google itself if its AI Overview answers adapt over time — and Google’s AI Overview search results said that they do:
“User behavior: The way users interact with AI Overviews, including the types of queries they make and the information they find helpful, also influences how the system evolves.”
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In other words, two Google users could type the exact same question and get two different answers. We’re not necessarily getting the best information; we’re getting exposed to the answers and information that AI thinks we want to receive.
The experience made me begin to wonder: What impact will these new, more prevalent AI-generated search results have on people seeking sound theological information?
An article from The Conversation, written by three people at the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making & Society (affiliate T.J. Thomson, postdoctoral research fellow Ashwin Nagappa, and Ph.D. candidate Shir Weinbrand), states that legacy search engines work by evaluating a large amount of criteria in order to show you the results that it thinks are the best match for what you’re looking for, and then adding it all up to create an invisible score that ranks web pages in your search results. But AI is changing all of this, they write:
“Instead of directing users to one specific webpage, generative AI-powered search looks across webpages and sources to try to synthesise what they say. It then tries to summarise the results in a short, conversational and easy-to-understand way. In theory, this can result in richer, more comprehensive, and potentially more unique answers. But AI doesn’t always get it right.”
This shifting of search results to better anticipate user preference and deliver information accordingly in a tidy summary could be useful if, say, you want an easy answer for something low-stakes, like a weekly meal plan, summarized and sorted for you.
But when it comes to questions about faith, theology, and God, this technology can be dangerous. When AI summarizes the theology from across the internet that it thinks you want to read, it creates the kind of echo chamber that inhibits spiritual growth and reinforces only the information and ideas we want to hear, instead of offering knowledge from a sound theological basis.
When AI summarizes the theology from across the internet that it thinks you want to read, it creates the kind of echo chamber that inhibits spiritual growth and reinforces only the information and ideas we want to hear, instead of offering knowledge from a sound theological basis.
“I worry for pastors, in some ways, that it won’t help them stretch their sermon writing muscles, which is where I think so much of our great theology and great sermons come from, years and years of preaching,” Thomas Costello, a pastor at New Hope Hawaii Kai in Honolulu, told The New York Times.
In an article in The Seattle Times, Phil EuBank, a pastor at Menlo Church in Menlo Park, Calif., compared AI to a “bionic arm” that could boost his productivity. But when AI writes a sermon, "there's that Uncanny Valley Territory ... where it may get you really close [to a sermon written by a person], but really close can be really weird.”
And Greg Epstein, Harvard Humanist chaplain and author of a forthcoming book on AI’s impact on religion, told The Harvard Gazette that some people have started seeing AI itself as a higher power.
“If religious and secular people aren’t careful, what artificial intelligence is promising or threatening to do is really supersede religion or outpace it,” Epstein said.
It can be tricky to find trustworthy resources online where a curious reader can go to find accessible answers to faith questions, and Google can be a helpful tool in those moments. But if you’re Googling a faith question (who among us hasn’t, at this point?), a little extra effort goes a long way. Scroll past the AI Overview and look at the options that appear below it, vetting sources yourself and comparing what scholars say to each other. Thinking critically about what you see in the search results will give you a clearer picture of the possible answers you could find, helping you make decisions that will be useful instead of providing out-of-the-box answers from an AI robot trained on every bit of theology it can find on the Internet, from the good to the bad to the just plain weird.
If what we want is to encourage people to seek answers to their faith questions in such a way that helps them grow and contributes to Christian formation, then Google’s AI Overview feature provides the opposite. It should be handled with great care, intentionality, and a sharp eye on the clear and present danger it presents to the spiritual formation of people of faith today.
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