Nuovi orizzonti e nuovi confini della digital religion: intelligenza artificiale e realtà immersive

This chapter examines the transformation of religion within digital environments, approaching digital religion not as the simple relocation of beliefs, institutions, and practices online, but as a reconfiguration of religion produced through the interaction of people, platforms, devices, and technological languages. After emphasizing the fluid and unstable nature of digital sources, the study reconstructs the genealogy of the field, from early interpretations of cyberspace as a separate reality to the onlife paradigm, in which online and offline dimensions can no longer be meaningfully separated. Particular attention is devoted to the changing meanings of ritual experience, authenticity, and religious authority. Digital and immersive rituals are not understood as deficient copies of physical practices, but as distinctive forms capable of generating participation, belonging, and meaning through new modes of embodiment and mediated presence. Virtual reality, augmented reality, and the Metaverse expand the possible spaces of the sacred, enabling pilgrimages, celebrations, and contemplative practices that could not exist solely within physical environments. Artificial intelligence introduces a further shift, since it not only communicates religious content but also selects, interprets, and generates it, increasingly performing catechetical, pastoral, and spiritual functions. Religious authority consequently moves from the exclusively institutional level toward infrastructural and algorithmic forms of mediation. The chapter therefore proposes a relational understanding of technological responsibility and stresses the need for transparent systems of digital governance capable of safeguarding pluralism, access, and dissent. Digital religion ultimately emerges as a crucial analytical lens through which to understand both the transformation of religious experience and the changing ontology of human presence in the post-digital age.