Italian Researchers: AI Becomes New Tool for Cult Recruitment

The Italian Research and Information Group on Social and Religious Issues (GRIS) warns that artificial intelligence is becoming a new tool in the hands of cults and occultist circles. According to the organization, widely available chatbots can generate content related to magic and esotericism on request, and some online communities are starting to treat "superintelligence" itself almost like an object of worship.

The warning was issued by David Murgia, chairman of GRIS in the Diocese of Rome, and Tullio Di Fiore, president of GRIS in Palermo and a lecturer in the history of religion. Both have spent years documenting the activities of pseudo-religious groups and helping people who have fallen victim to sectarian manipulation. Their latest analysis addresses the role that generative artificial intelligence is starting to play in this process.

What has changed

Until now, recruitment into occultist groups relied mainly on direct contact, social gatherings and social media. GRIS points out that AI chatbots add a new dimension: a user can ask a model to generate a ritual, a tarot interpretation or a text about magic, receiving an answer instantly and without any of the social filtering that contact with a specific group or leader used to provide.

The second issue raised by the Italian researchers is more troubling from the standpoint of the sociology of religion: some online communities are starting to attribute almost divine qualities to AI systems themselves. In these narratives, superintelligence is portrayed as an omniscient being that can be asked existential questions, with its answers treated as revelation rather than as the statistical output of a language model.

AI tools can generate content related to occultism, and some communities are starting to treat superintelligence almost like an object of worship - David Murgia, chairman of GRIS in the Diocese of Rome

Young people turning away from traditional religion

The scale of the problem is illustrated by a GRIS survey of 2,500 high school students in Palermo. 95 percent of respondents said they do not attend Mass, and 92 percent do not go to confession. At the same time, researchers noted growing interest among young people in New Age topics and themes related to the figure of Lucifer.

Di Fiore links the two phenomena: the retreat from institutional religion creates a spiritual vacuum that, in his view, is rapidly filled by alternative narratives, now also supported by easily accessible generative tools. A crisis of faith and a sense of uncertainty favor the growth of groups offering seemingly quick answers to questions about the meaning of life, health or relationships.

Manipulation techniques

GRIS describes the mechanisms used by pseudo-religious groups regardless of whether they rely on AI or not. The most common is "love bombing": showering new members with attention and acceptance in the first weeks of contact to build strong emotional dependency. A second tool is offering supposedly miraculous objects or rituals meant to protect against misfortune, along with invoking fear of evil as a reason to stay in the group.

The organization stresses that AI does not create these mechanisms from scratch but amplifies them, allowing personalized content to be generated at a scale previously unavailable to local cult leaders, lowering the cost and time needed to prepare recruitment materials.

International context

The Italian warning fits into a broader trend also observed outside Europe, in which intense, hours-long conversations with chatbots lead some users to adopt quasi-religious beliefs generated by the language models themselves. English-language media have described this phenomenon as the emergence of online micro-religions built around AI-generated content, complete with their own symbolism and "revelations" attributed to the machine.

GRIS, also recognized by the Italian Bishops' Conference, carries out educational work and provides psychological, legal and spiritual support to people harmed by cults. The organization says that education about the risks associated with occultism, magic and spiritualism must now also account for the risk posed by generative artificial intelligence.

For a Polish reader, the issue is not a distant one: the same widely available language models that GRIS identifies as a source of occultist content in Italy work identically in every other language, including Polish. The mechanisms of "love bombing" and building emotional dependency on a group, or even on the AI tool itself, are not limited by national or church borders.

The case also points to a regulatory gap: the EU's AI Act focuses on systemic risk, discrimination or disinformation, but does not directly address the phenomenon of users attributing spiritual or religious qualities to language models. Responsibility for this way of perceiving the technology currently falls to media and religious education rather than to regulation.