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This paper explores the impact of AI on prayer experiences by designing four conceptual AI systems intended to assist prayer practices, informed by a diary study identifying key values. Participants evaluated these systems through speculative design workbooks, revealing that AI's presence often diminishes the sense of authenticity, especially when AI assumes too much agency. The study concludes that AI designs for value-laden experiences should prioritize user agency and interpretive openness, potentially leveraging AI's inexplicability or non-use as design resources.
AI's involvement in prayer risks undermining the crucial sense of authenticity, particularly when it oversteps into guiding the experience.
We present four conceptual value-sensitive AI systems to examine how the presence of AI could influence praying experiences. Drawing on key values and practices associated with praying identified through a diary study, we designed AI systems intended to"assist"prayer practices. These designs were presented to participants through speculative design workbooks, serving as provocations to co-reflect on how the intervention of AI systems might shape their praying experiences. Our findings suggest that a sense of authenticity (or feeling a genuine connection to the divine) is a crucial value, while the presence of AI was often perceived as diminishing this authenticity, particularly when AI assumed too much agency in guiding praying practices. Based on our findings, we argue that AI system designs for deeply value-laden experiences should preserve users'agency in shaping their own experiences by maintaining interpretive openness, perhaps by leveraging AI's inexplicability as a resource for personal meaning-making or by recognizing non-use of AI as a legitimate design choice.
