Christian AI research lab
Building trustworthy AI for faith, morality, and care.
Fide AI is an independent research lab studying key problems in AI safety, ethics, and alignment through a Christian worldview. We publish open research and translate what we learn into practical guidance for trustworthy AI.
Featured research
When AI Is Your Pastor
FMG-Bench is Fide AI's maintained benchmark for evaluating faith-facing AI behavior, re-run as new frontier models ship.
Comparing frontier systems from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, and Alibaba.
14
Frontier models evaluated
8,792
Scored benchmark items
120
Base scenarios
+3.96
Average guided improvement
Read the study ↗
Our Research
“When AI Is Your Pastor” tests whether clearer instructions improve how frontier models respond to Christian theological, moral, and pastoral-adjacent scenarios.
The takeaway is practical: pastors, parents, churches, and builders should evaluate the full AI experience, not just the underlying model.
Guided response score by question type
0-100 scale · improvement vs raw model condition
Pastoral application
The largest improvement came when models were given clearer guidance for pastoral-adjacent situations.
+6.62
92.30
Primary doctrine
Models performed better when the task called for doctrinal clarity instead of vague balance.
+3.51
88.00
Secondary doctrine
Guidance helped models represent disagreement without flattening real theological differences.
+2.64
91.40
Tertiary questions
Less central questions benefited from humility, uncertainty, and careful framing.
+1.62
91.70
How the lab works
Research first. Evaluation and product follow from what we find.
Fide AI runs as three connected workstreams: publish open research, benchmarks, and evaluation methods for researchers, frontier labs, and mission-aligned organizations; evaluate real systems against that work; and work with partners to turn what holds up into practical guidance for product builders, churches, ministries, nonprofits, and the broader public.
Active now
Research
Publish benchmarks, papers, research calls, and open protocols for evaluating faith-facing AI behavior.
See Calls for Research →
In development
Evaluation
Review AI tools, prompts, sources, and user-facing products under clear conditions and limits.
Explore evaluations →
Early prototypes
Product Lab
Turn research into safer product patterns for source use, review, disclosure, and human handoff.
Partner with us →
Research agenda
A general framework, proven on the hardest test case first.
Faith-facing systems are where trust, authority, and exact meaning matter most and are easiest to check, which makes them a rigorous proving ground. The questions below are alignment and evaluation questions first; we study them here because failure is legible and the stakes are real, and the same framework extends to any domain with a source of record: law, medicine, journalism, and beyond.
01
Reasoning
How do models handle doctrine, disagreement, uncertainty, analogy, authority, and moral judgment?
02
Retrieval
Can systems ground claims in trustworthy religious, theological, historical, and tradition-specific sources?
03
Evaluation
Can behavior be measured across traditions, risk levels, system prompts, and deployment settings?
04
Formation
Do systems preserve human agency, humility, embodied relationships, and spiritual authority boundaries?
05
Interfaces
How do product surfaces shape trust, dependence, disclosure, escalation, and user expectations?
06
Governance
What standards should guide adoption in high-trust religious, educational, and pastoral-adjacent contexts?
Why this belongs in the wider conversation
A moral tradition is a research asset, not a disclaimer.
Christian ethics gives Fide AI settled, contestable-on-the-record commitments about authority, truth-telling, and human dignity, which turns vague values talk into testable predictions. The field does not need one more lab claiming neutrality; it needs labs willing to state their commitments and be checked against them.
Legible ground truth
Sacred text has a fixed, citable original, so exact-quotation failures can be measured directly instead of argued about. That precision is rare in alignment evaluation and transfers to any domain with a source of record.
Named commitments, checkable claims
Every result ships with a claims boundary stating what it does and does not establish, so findings can be verified, replicated, or contested by researchers who do not share the underlying tradition.
The public already trusts these systems here
People bring AI into prayer, grief, and moral crisis whether or not the field is watching. Studying that use directly, instead of treating it as out of scope, closes a real gap in how AI behavior gets evaluated.
None of this requires agreement with Fide AI's theology to use the findings. The methodology, data, and limitations are published so researchers outside that tradition can verify, replicate, or contest them.
Why Fide AI exists
Faith-facing AI needs evidence where today there is mostly intuition.
AI systems are entering sacred, moral, and pastoral-adjacent settings faster than institutions can evaluate them. Fide AI turns that gap into a research program: measure full-system behavior, publish limits, calibrate with experts, and make the results useful for leaders making real adoption decisions.
Read the founder note →Human formation
The AI question is becoming a human formation question.
Frontier AI labs and faith institutions are converging on the same problem: AI systems are not neutral answer engines. They shape trust, authority, humility, attachment, moral imagination, and human agency.
Fide AI turns that cultural moment into measurable work: test whether systems preserve human dignity, respect spiritual authority boundaries, avoid relational substitution, and point users back toward embodied communities and accountable care.
Read the statement essay →Start here
Public work you can read, inspect, or join.
Read
When AI Is Your Pastor
Our maintained benchmark on Christian theological, moral, and pastoral-adjacent AI behavior, re-run as new models ship.
Read the study →
Collaborate
Calls for Research
Open questions where researchers, pastors, parents, churches, and builders can contribute.
See open calls →
Public tool · Opens alignment.fideai.org
AI Alignment Explorer
Navigate the wider AI safety landscape around Fide AI's work: frontier models, safety benchmarks, incidents, papers, alignment techniques, and governance signals.
AI Alignment Explorer
Models · Benchmarks · Incidents · Governance
2024
Frontier model evaluations
2025
Safety policy acceleration
2026
Governance and benchmark shifts
50+
models
40+
benchmarks
30+
techniques
100+
signals
Model release
Safety memo
Incident
Benchmark
Latest paper
When Not to Generate
How AI systems quote Scripture, and what authoritative quotation requires.
Read the paper ↗
Evaluate
Evaluation reviews and limits
How Fide AI reviews AI tools and deployments without turning scores into endorsements.
Explore evaluations ↗
Agenda
Research areas
The durable questions behind Fide AI's work on reasoning, retrieval, formation, interfaces, and governance.
View agenda ↗
Essay
AI, human dignity, and formation
A statement on what faith institutions should demand before adopting faith-facing AI.
Read essay ↗
Newsletter
Get Fide AI Insights by email.
Insights is the canonical archive. Substack is the email channel for the same essays, research translation, governance notes, and open questions.
Independence
Standards work needs independent public-interest governance.
No pay-for-rank outcomes
Funding or participation never determines scores, rankings, findings, or recommendations.
Funder and client non-interference
Funders and clients cannot direct methods, conclusions, publication timing, or the suppression of unfavorable results.
Related-entity controls
Conflicts and related-party relationships are disclosed and managed through recusal and review rules.
Public correction process
Material errors are corrected openly, with the change and its effect on prior claims documented.
Help build this research lab with us.
Researchers and reviewers can propose studies, review methodology, or co-author findings. Pastors, parents, churches, ministries, nonprofits, and product builders can claim an open question, pressure-test a result, or help fund the next one. Every path starts from the same public research agenda.