Elder Gerrit W. Gong speaks on AI use at BYU’s Education Week
Aug 21, 2025, 9:02 AM
Elder Gerrit W. Gong, of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, speaks during the Sunday morning session of the 195th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City on Sunday, April 6, 2025. (Jeffrey D. Allred for the Deseret News)
(Jeffrey D. Allred for the Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Elder Gerrit W. Gong of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spoke to attendees at BYU’s Education week on Tuesday, talking about the positives and negatives associated with the use of artificial intelligence.
About 20 minutes into his speech on AI, Elder Gong talked about concerns he has with the technological advancement.
“One concern is for what we call deep fakes,” Elder Gong said. “Deep fakes occur when AI is used to create deceptive or misleading images or videos.”
A deep fake video or photo can be generated that appears to be real, but is not. Elder Gong also expressed worries about people replacing genuine human connections with AI relationships, problems with transparency and the constant need to fact-check the service.
Church leaders are also concerned with members’ outsourcing their spirituality.
“We will not grow spiritually if we let artificial intelligence write our sacrament talks or do our seminary homework,” Elder Gong said. “AI cannot replace our individual effort in spiritual preparation as we prepare lessons, prayers, or blessings.”
Elder Gong added AI can be used to aid in researching, editing, or performing other similar tasks.
He referenced a speech he gave in July at a Religions for Peace conference in Istanbul, Republic Of Turkey. Elder Gong had three main points:
- Artificial intelligence is not God and will never be God
“AI cannot provide inspired divine truth or independent moral guidance,” Elder Gong said. “As a creation of God, man can create AI, but AI cannot create God.”
2. AI can be used consciously and intentionally for good
Elder Gong says exponentially compounding AI technologies offers up new ideas and possibilities. He also praised pushing the AI’s ability to simulate human reason, decode, emotions, solve issues and minimize risk management among many other possibilities.
3. Leaders and citizens should be invited across all governments, industries and faith organizations to align AI developments with faith-based principles and moral values.
“A faith-based community AI evaluation can champion safe and responsible human-centric AI.”
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