CGIS: AI and Muslim Piety on TikTok with Christoph Günther

The use of AI to create videos on social media is a growing phenomenon. This presentation examines the ways in which Muslim content creators utilize AI- generated texts and images to illustrate Qur'anic passages and hadith narrations, creating visually engaging content to promote ethical guidance and encourage people to a more pious conduct. Blending sacred narratives with non-Islamic visual frameworks, these videos offer insights into how AI technologies mediate religious expression in the digital age and challenge audiences to consider the implications of blending sacred and secular visual vocabularies in the pursuit of piety. Christoph Günther currently is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Religious Studies / University of Erfurt. Trained in Islamic Studies, History, and Arabic, his research and teaching touch upon issues of religion and digital media, visual culture, as well as social change and the role of religio-political actors therein. His current research focuses on the ways in which contemporary Muslim preachers design audiovisual mediations and how Muslim practitioners engage with such videos and images in the course of their daily religious and media practices. He is the author of Entrepreneurs of Identity: The Islamic State’s Symbolic Repertoire (Berghahn Books, 2022) and co-editor of Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations (Edinburgh University Press, 2020) and Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media (Edinburgh University Press, 2023).