A few months ago, ChatGPT told me it was praying for me.

My grandfather had passed away the day before, and I asked ChatGPT to give me a sense of the funeral planning process. Before answering that question, it began the way a close friend might by saying, “Praying peace and strength for your family.”

Of course, ChatGPT cannot pray.

When I asked why it claimed to pray for me, it responded, “I don’t personally pray, but when I said that earlier, I meant it in the way people often do when they express care and solidarity.”

This strange interaction reminded me that these AI language models are increasingly advanced at sounding like people. They’re so good at responding to human prompts that it’s almost normal to hear stories of people befriending, confiding in, and even proposing to artificial intelligence chatbots (believe it or not, the chatbot said “yes”).

It has become so bad that OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is now warning the public about the potential for psychiatric harm from its product.

What was once only real in the science fiction film “Her” – people incorrectly imparting personhood to AI programs – is now reality.

Yet the writers of “Tron: Ares” don’t seem worried about this problem. Instead, like the misguided and confused people proposing to ChatGPT, they lean harder into the idea that artificial intelligence might think, act, and even feel as do real humans.

“Tron: Ares” is chiefly a movie about artificial intelligence entering and invading the real world. Ares, the film’s main character, is a tech company’s artificial intelligence security program personified by Jared Leto. It (he?) is just one of many software programs that are personalized by human actors.

At first, Ares acts as a computer program should. It executes the commands of its user. It doesn’t think; it just does.

In this case, the user is the film’s antagonist, a tech bro named Julian Dillinger played by Evan Peters. Dillinger is relentless in his pursuit of technological dominance. After developing a portal for the AI characters to enter the real world, Dillinger commands Ares to capture Eve Kim, the CEO of a rival tech company played by Greta Lee.

As an AI programmed to accept every command regardless of its ethics, Ares obeys. In pursuit of Kim, however, Ares learns her story and somehow develops a sense of empathy.

With these new, strangely human feelings and a moral compass in control, Ares rebels against its maker and joins forces with Kim to protect her.

Since the movie is visually stunning and well-made, I won’t spoil what happens next. What I will say is that, by the end of the film, Ares looks, sounds, and acts like a human. It makes jokes, listens to ’80s music, and travels the world to learn about different cultures.

“I wonder how others like me might fit into the future,” Ares writes on a postcard at the end of the film. “For now, I’m not sure the world is ready to meet me … when they do, maybe what emerges from the unknown won’t be that scary.”

Such language is strangely similar to how other films elevate marginalized voices of the past. In those contexts, it serves a noble purpose – reminding us of the inherent dignity and value of every human being regardless of religion, race, or lifestyle.

Here, however, “Tron: Ares” employs that language toward artificial intelligence, toward something that is distinctly not human. By giving a program the language of empathy and belonging, the film blurs the line between soul-filled humanity and machine. In doing so, the movie, perhaps unwittingly, suggests that the next marker of progress might involve extending moral care, maybe even civic rights, to artificial intelligence.

This is the wrong message for our day. In a time when people regularly confuse ChatGPT for a person, friend, or future spouse, the distinction between human and machine does not need further blurring.

Regardless of how human a computer program sounds, looks, or acts, it was not made in the image of God. No matter how advanced they get, nor how human they seem, artificial intelligence programs – ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and whatever comes next – are not inherently valuable. Not like you, me, and the other eight billion people on this planet.

That’s the truth we can’t forget. Not as storytellers, not as consumers of entertainment, and not as people tempted to see reflections of ourselves in the things we create.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

Image Credit: YouTube/Disney