Religious Authority in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: the Case of the 7chat.ai

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Abstract This article investigates the institutional negotiations and socio-psychological adaptations involved in the deployment of a denominational artificial intelligence agent, using the 7chat.ai – launched by the South American Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in May 2025 – as a case study. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis applied exclusively to official public documents, the study maps how the institution discursively constructs the legitimacy and functional boundaries of the tool, revealing internal tensions across three intersecting layers of governance: pastoral, technical, and data. The analysis maps how the institution discursively constructs the tool’s legitimacy and boundaries, revealing internal tensions across pastoral, technical, and data layers. The study identifies design features that, from a critical theoretical perspective, can be interpreted as discursive and socio-technical conditions under which religious authority may be reconfigured. Rather than claiming demonstrated user effects, the article proposes that these features could contribute to reduced tolerance for theological ambiguity and to shifts in expectations regarding pastoral care. It further suggests that the institutional logic of scalability may create conditions under which dehumanizing dynamics become structurally normalized, although this claim requires empirical investigation. The article warns of potential risks related to psychological manipulation and epistemic closure, emphasizing that the adoption of AI in religious contexts demands critical scrutiny of its socio-emotional architecture, and proposes an agenda for future empirical research to assess the real-world impacts of these technologies on religious formation and pastoral practice in Latin America.