We live in an era where people are using AI to do everything for them. Teachers use it to write quizzes, children use it to fill out the quizzes, and teachers use it to grade said quizzes. And everyone feels so smart but learns nothing.

It’s a beautiful system, and it’s obviously not healthy.

Conversely, AI has countless legitimate uses. If the teacher has written a test, why should she not ask AI to critique it, clean up her typos and perhaps suggest room for improvement? If the test is not on grammar, why should the student not take advantage of the tools that will clean up his or her writing and allow the ideas to be easily parsed? And why should the teacher not automate the tedious task of grading quizzes?

Clearly, it’s a question of how much and when.

And the same thing goes for using AI to craft a devar Torah.

On one hand, AI is a great way to come up with fresh ideas and perspectives to consider. It’s also a master at helping us organize and articulate our thoughts.

On the other hand, to hand off the task of crafting a novel Torah thought to a computer is wrong for several reasons:

AI Is Still Pretty Dumb

As someone who has fielded more than his fair share of AI-generated junk masquerading as original writing for Chabad.org, I can assure you that AI has perfected the art of producing something that looks polished but is actually pretty empty once you start considering it. Kind of like a beautifully frosted birthday cake on an ornate platter, but the cake inside is missing.

But what happens when AI becomes so “intelligent” that it will be able to present well-reasoned ideas that are identical to those crafted by humans?

It’s Unethical

When people read your essay or listen to your talk, they are entrusting you with their most precious commodity—their time—because they believe that you have something thoughtful or uplifting to bring to the table. To take their attention and give them back something that you did not consider and is not reflective of your thoughts and feelings falls under the category of geneivat daat, “stealing understanding.”

But what about if you tell everyone? Is it a legitimate devar Torah?

It’s Not Torah

Torah is G‑d’s wisdom. In His kindness, He invited us to become one with Him through learning His Torah. When we innovate in Torah, we become His partners in creating and extending the Torah. When we learn Torah, our minds become one with Him in a unity not found anywhere else in the human experience. This is, of course, possible only because we are His children, taken from His essence.

But can a computer create this Divine unity needed to take a bunch of words and make them into Torah? No, it cannot.

Thus, I would argue that while AI has a lot to contribute and can be cautiously used as an aid to Torah study and the formulation of Torah thoughts, a Torah thought generated by AI is not Torah, and to pass it off as such is both disingenuous and a disservice to the “creator” and the unsuspecting readers.

For more on this topic, from a different perspective, please see Can AI Replace Rabbis?