UNITED KINGDOM: AI and Freedom of Religion or Belief: Promise and Peril (III)
Faith and Media Summit (Oxford): Session “Faith, Media & AI”
By Hans Noot, deputy director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (17.09.2025) – From 11 to 14 September 2025, The Faith and Media Summit, an initiative of Radiant Foundation held in Oxford, addressed the complex issue of the relations between media and religions. This was a first-of-its-kind gathering of scholars, storytellers, and industry leaders exploring how faith is represented – and often misrepresented – in the modern media landscape.(**) The author was invited to participate in the debate about AI and Freedom of Religion or Belief.
Artificial Intelligence is reshaping nearly every sector of society, and its impact on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) is no exception. On the positive side, AI can make information about religions and belief systems more widely accessible, helping people better understand traditions different from their own. Translation tools break down language barriers, while digital monitoring systems can track violations of religious freedom in real time, giving NGOs and journalists better data to hold governments accountable. AI can also help marginalized communities amplify their voices through safer, more efficient communication channels.
At the same time, AI carries risks. Automated surveillance systems are increasingly used by authoritarian states to track religious minorities, limiting their freedom to gather and worship. Biased algorithms may reinforce stereotypes, flagging certain groups as “suspect” or amplifying hate speech online. Even well-intentioned uses—like content moderation—can unintentionally silence religious expression if the algorithms are not carefully designed.
How AI can help bridge the “jargon gap” between religions—a barrier that often makes interfaith dialogue difficult?
Religions have a tendency to define words their own way. This causes confusion in interfaith dialogue. Baptism, for example, is a concept Muslims are not familiar to, although they do have cleansing rituals, wuḍūʾ and ghusl. But even amongst Christians it may mean either a saving ritual, an expression of taking Jesus in one’s heart, or making a sacred vow or covenant to follow Jesus.
Over time, many religious words have shifted in meaning. Take the word faith. Today, people often think of faith as believing in something you cannot prove, sometimes even as the opposite of science. But in ancient times, faith meant trust. And far from rejecting science, it was religious thinkers—Muslims and Christians—who laid many of its foundations. They developed algebra, architecture, genetics, and biology, and built the first universities to study them. For them, faith meant trusting what you had come to understand, not closing your eyes to knowledge. Faith and science were partners, not enemies.
This is exactly where AI can help today: by showing us how words have changed across history, cultures, and translations. Instead of leaving us with misunderstandings, AI can trace meanings back to their roots and clarify what communities really meant. Used carefully, it can turn old confusion into new understanding.
AI, when used carefully, can help us understand the deeper meaning of religious words by giving context and examples. For example, when the Bible was first translated from Hebrew into European languages, some key words about life and the human self were misunderstood.
In Hebrew, words like nephesh and ruach mean “breath,” “wind,” or simply “a living being.” They describe life as a whole, physical reality—a person is alive because God has given them some sort of breath. But in translation into Latin, English, German, and French, these words often became “soul” or “spirit.” That made people think of the soul as a separate, invisible part of a person that lives on after death. In short, a simple translation shift turned the “breath of life” into the idea of an “immortal soul,” and this shaped centuries of belief. AI can now highlight such differences, showing how words once meant one thing and later came to mean another—helping us avoid misunderstanding across faiths today.
These examples show how AI can help us better understand religious terminology across different faiths and enhance interfaith dialogue. But the picture changes when AI is used against religions. At its core, AI is built on existing information—books, articles, websites, and other texts that humans have created. It is very good at searching through this data and connecting it with the questions we ask.
However, AI is not the same as human intelligence. It works by spotting patterns in data, not by thinking or understanding. It has no consciousness, no lived experience, no emotions, and no values. Humans, on the other hand, combine knowledge with judgment, creativity, and personal experience. That makes AI limited: it cannot create new truth or knowledge beyond what is already in its database. If the information AI is trained on includes stereotypes, fake news, or hostile opinions about religions, AI may simply repeat and amplify them. In short, AI reflects what we feed it. Used without care, it can spread prejudice. Used responsibly, it can promote understanding.
AI mirrors what we feed it. If we allow stereotypes and falsehoods to dominate, it will spread prejudice. But if we actively provide accurate information and use it with care, AI can become a tool for understanding, interfaith dialogue, and the protection of freedom of religion or belief. The responsibility for its users is to feed, train and guide it well.
(*) Katrina Lantos Swett is President of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice which advocates for human rights worldwide, championing the rule of law, freedom of religion and belief, Internet freedom in closed societies, and fighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial. She formerly served as Chair and Vice Chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) and teaches Human Rights and American Foreign Policy at Tufts University. She is also Co-Chair of the International Religious Freedom Summit, launched in 2021, and remains deeply engaged in the global fight for justice and human rights.
Hans Noot currently serves as the cdeputy director of Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF). As an organizational anthropologist and international field consultant and board member of HRWF, he actively participates in a number of networks and coalitions that seek to shape EU policy on human rights and democracy, such as the Human Rights and Democracy Network (HRDN). Noot is the managing director of The Noodt Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan NGO supporting Freedom of Religion or Belief in Europe. He holds a Masters Degree in Organizational Behavior from BYU.
(**) See the list of speakers and contributors to the debate HERE.
Photo: Faith and Media Summit, September 2025: Hans Noot with Ms Katrina Lantos Swett (*), the moderator of the session “Faith, Media & AI” (Credit: HRWF)
