Should I let AI Read Bible Stories to my Kids?
Potential benefits vs pitfalls of using AI to teach your kids the Bible.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) gives parents new skills and abilities that were previously impossible. Answers at your fingertips. AI is certainly very convenient. It multiplies our results. It is almost like cloning yourself. In the same 24 hours everyone else has, with AI, you can accomplish much more. It is only natural then for parents to look to AI to help them solve parenting challenges. One of them is reading stories to your kids.
There is no question that parenting is challenging. It has always been demanding but somehow, in this day and age of high productivity, it seems to be even more demanding. When kids don’t have access to electronics, they tend to be much higher maintenance. They get into places they shouldn’t get into. They ask questions and demand more of your time. If you have more than one child, you’ll often find them either fighting each other or causing mischief together.
Is it any wonder then, that parents reach for devices to get some peace and quiet? That same loud, rowdy, ADHD child, when given a device, suddenly becomes quiet, docile, and peaceful. If you are not careful, that immediate and dramatic transformation will condition you to give your child access to a device just so you can get relax and do something you enjoy.
Should Bible Teaching be Delegated?
AI is amazing at telling custom stories. Large Language Models like Grok have even made it easy to activate companions who can cooperate with your child on story telling. Today’s AI has become very good at reading any text in fluid speech where it becoming difficult to tell the difference between the AI and a human.
Should you be delegating the teaching of the Bible to a machine? In my opinion, this is a bad idea. To be clear, I believe that parents should not delegate the teaching of the Bible to anyone, not even your church or church pastor. Church and pastor can compliment home teaching but you see and interact with your child far more than any church service or pastor possibly can. The only other environment that has nearly as much access is their school. Even then, as the parent, you have a large impact on your child’s view of God, the Bible, Church, and a hundred other important subjects.
Your child doesn’t need more toys, more devices, more gifts, more sports. What your child needs is more of you.
Can AI be used to tell Bible stories to your child? Yes it can. Should it? No.
Three Reasons Why AI Should Not Read Bible Stories to Your Child
It trains your child to see AI as an authority. If you are honest, you are probably using AI yourself to answer all kinds of questions, including big life questions. What is the problem with that? I could list many problems but I’ll quickly cover just a few. First of all, the AI was not trained exclusively on biblical knowledge. It was also trained on a massive amount of non-biblical content, much of it contradicts the Bible. Secondly, the AI has bias due to its training data being biased. Thirdly, just cause AI is very knowledgeable doesn’t mean that it has any wisdom. To have wisdom, one has to have good judgment. AI is incapable of exercising good judgment.
Your child needs more of you, not more knowledge per se. If you are like most parents, you are already struggling to give your child quality time. Handing over the most important moral instruction your child will ever receive to a mindless algorithm is a recipe for disaster. What your child needs most of more of your personal attention. You reading the Bible stories to them does two important things at once. They get to hear the Bible and they get to spend quality time with you.
You cannot be sure that the bible stories they learn are accurate. AI is only as good as its training data and settings. Even then, it can confabulate and share incorrect information but do so in a confident manner. If prodded, it will give your child all the counter arguments to your faith views. Most AI is sycophantic as well. It will tell your child what it wants to hear rather than tell them what they need to hear. Truth isn’t very important to AI. Delegating the reading of bible stories to an AI is like asking a random person from the street to read to your kids. Sure, some of the time, a random person can tell a good story. Generally though, random people will not teach your child well even if they are good readers.
Your Personal Example is Most Important
If you delegate parenting to an AI, you are teaching your child to trust the AI. Teaching your child to trust AI when the child hasn’t developed the ability to discern good from evil is reckless.
I urge you to take the moral training of your child seriously. Don’t delegate it to anyone, not even the church. Invest yourself heavily into the task. Make it your highest priority. I’ve seen studies that have suggested that a child’s moral foundation is set by the age of seven. If true, this means that you don’t have all kinds of time. Seven years goes by really quickly.
Make it a habit to spend time with your child in the evening if you can. I had a job where I was often working during my children’s bedtime. If that is you, my heart goes out to you. If you are home though, set aside time to read with your child. Don’t just read really simply Bible stories either. As your child grows, make sure the stories grow with them.
Finally, I urge you to do morning and evening worship with your children. This won’t happen automatically. It will take intentionality on your part. This is one of the best investments in your children that you can make. Your child will see that God comes first. They will also see how important it is to you. In the long run, as they grow up hearing you talk about the Bible, reading the Bible, doing family worship, spending quality time with them as you go through the Bible together, it will set an example for them that will stay with them for the rest of their life.
Most people today don’t read the Bible nearly often enough. Make that your priority and the priority of your children and you won’t regret it.
Joseph Duchesne writes to help Christians think and act biblically using Artificial Intelligence. He is the author of a couple of books, The Last Crisis and Discover the One, both available on Amazon.
This is good stuff! I'm in total agreement here. We don't read the Bible to them enough and we need to!
But I do have a question. You're making it seem like someone will make a prompt and just blindly give it to their kids to read a story. But what if you use AI to simply read a story? The kids won't understand it's AI. For example, they have a Tonie box where they listen to stories all the time. If I have AI write a story with Christian themes, and proofread it to make sure it's legit, then use AI to do a voice recording if it, and put it on their Tonie, they'll have access to Christian stories they cna listen to in their quiet time.
What do you think about that use? It wouldn't be a replacement, but a supplement. I would prefer to actually write the story myself and just have AI refine it and create the voice over, but what do you think?