Critical Approaches to the Study of Religion and AI: A Case Study of AI Bible on Instagram

I use the example of The AI Bible on Instagram to model an approach that analyzes both religion and AI as disciplinary technologies. First, I survey scholarly approaches to and popular discourses on AI-image generators and biblical texts, highlighting debates over accuracy, evaluations of quality, and an emphasis on autonomy and personalization. I then provide an overview of The AI Bible account on Instagram, analyzing the human/machine collaboration in content creation and the affordances of the AI models and algorithm-driven platforms. Finally, I explore concepts of content collapse and platform governance in order to highlight the ways in which hyperconnectivity disciplines us. The AI Bible shows how the myth industry is shaped by the logics of platform capitalism—templated creativity, attention economies, and circulation governed by opaque, proprietary algorithms.