A global initiative bringing together religious leaders, technology executives, and policymakers is seeking to answer a question that is growing more urgent as AI rapidly expands into daily life: Who decides the moral boundaries of AI?
The effort, called the Faith-AI Covenant, aims to develop a set of ethical principles to guide AI development before the technology becomes even more deeply embedded in society. Through a series of roundtable discussions in New York, Paris, Singapore, Nairobi, Shanghai, Bengaluru, and Rome, the organizers hope to bridge what they describe as a widening gap between those building AI systems and those focused on their human consequences.
The initiative was created by the Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities and is being developed in partnership with the technology firm Precognition. Organizers expect participation from leaders at companies such as OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, as well as Tesla. The first roundtable took place on April 30, 2026, in New York, with a culminating summit planned for Abu Dhabi. The Advisory Steering Group will then oversee the development of a plan to establish a covenant and implement and monitor some of the roundtable outcomes.
In New York, representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other tech companies sat behind closed doors with the Archdiocese of Newark, the New York Board of Rabbis, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Hindu Temple Society of North America. It is unclear whether all the roundtable meetings will be closed-door.
The project emerges as governments worldwide struggle to keep pace with AI’s explosive growth. What was once viewed primarily as a technical field is now increasingly shaping how people consume information, form opinions, and interact with one another.
“Artificial intelligence is not arriving into a stable world,” Baroness Joanna Shields, chair of the Faith-AI Covenant, wrote in a companion text outlining the initiative’s goals. Shields, a former technology executive and public official in the United Kingdom, warned that societies already fractured by social media algorithms and misinformation are entering a new era in which AI systems do more than distribute information; they shape how people interpret it.
“They are becoming counselor, companion, confessor,” Shields stated. Organizers argue that regulators and lawmakers have struggled to respond in a timely manner. “Regulation moves in years; frontier AI moves in minutes,” Shields stated.
Congress has spent the past two years examining the consequences of AI’s rapid rise. Lawmakers have introduced legislation addressing everything from environmental concerns tied to AI’s enormous energy demands to the spread of AI-generated pornography and deepfakes.
One bipartisan proposal, the Take It Down Act, would criminalize the distribution of nonconsensual AI-generated explicit images and require online platforms to remove them after notification from victims. The bill gained momentum following incidents involving teenage girls targeted with fake nude images generated from ordinary social media photos.
At the same time, the United States and China are racing to dominate AI development. Hours after returning to office in January 2025, President Donald Trump announced Stargate, a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative involving OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank designed to dramatically expand American data centers and computing power.
For supporters of the Faith-AI Covenant, those developments underscore the fear that competitive and economic pressures are outpacing ethical considerations.
The initiative’s organizers argue that religious institutions can bring something largely absent from the global AI debate: centuries of moral and philosophical reflection about human dignity, responsibility, and harm.
“The questions AI now raises are not primarily technical questions,” Shields wrote. “What must not be done to a human being regardless of what is possible?”
AI has already begun to figure heavily into how doctrine is disseminated.
In the Jewish community, the nonprofit digital library Sefaria has used AI to organize and analyze thousands of years of sacred texts, allowing users to search Jewish teachings by themes such as grief, gratitude, and love.
“Technology has long played a critical role in bringing Jewish people closer to Jewish texts and tradition,” Sefaria CEO Daniel Septimus said.
Christian churches are also experimenting with AI-powered technology. In 2023, a Texas pastor drew international attention after using ChatGPT to help generate an entire Sunday worship service. Since then, companies have launched AI tools designed specifically for clergy, helping pastors turn sermons into podcasts, newsletters, devotionals, and social media content.
Some religious leaders see the technology as a practical tool for overworked ministries. Others fear AI could dilute authenticity and spiritual leadership by placing machines into spaces traditionally shaped by human wisdom and experience. That tension sits at the center of the Faith-AI Covenant.
Organizers insist the effort is not anti-technology. Many participants openly acknowledge AI’s potential to improve medicine, scientific research, and education. Instead, they argue that societies risk allowing technology to evolve faster than the ethical frameworks needed to guide it.
The covenant itself will not carry legal authority. Organizers describe it instead as a moral framework — a set of shared values and voluntary commitments for technology companies, faith institutions, and policymakers.
Whether such principles can meaningfully influence one of the fastest-moving industries in history remains unclear. But supporters believe there is still time to shape the trajectory of AI before its systems become too deeply woven into everyday life.
“The architecture of these systems is not yet fixed,” Shields wrote. “The norms are not yet established.”
