(Updated: July 2026)
The Association for Spiritual Integrity (ASI) recently updated their Honor Code of Ethics for Spiritual Leaders with a 25th tenet specific to AI:
“25. Using AI transparently and responsibly, including not claiming AI-generated work as our own.”
What does this mean for leaders, teachers, and healers in the metaphysical and esoteric arts?
An AI-generated image that demonstrated it understood the assignment, but couldn't deliver on its execution. (Note the seated posture and other oddities.)
The New ASI Honor Code Tenet for AI Use
What is ASI? ASI is a non-profit charity founded in 2018 to combat the very real issue of power misuse in spiritual leadership. They recognize the critical role spiritual teachers play in the holistic health of humans, while acknowledging that we spiritual teachers are humans ourselves. Visit the ASI “About Us” page to learn more about the work they do.
With the rise of use of AI across businesses and industries, there were no commonly held standards for those of us operating spiritual and esoteric businesses. Some of us developed and adapted our own rules for how and when we’ll use AI, while others indiscriminately use AI for everything from paid Tarot readings to complete blog posts, and from social media posts to digital merchandise.
How’s someone concerned about receiving authentic spiritual and esoteric services able to trust that the person they hand their money to is real and not just copying and pasting AI responses?
This is where ASI’s new tenet comes in.
Not only are ASI members–like me–held to using AI responsibly within our businesses. We’re also held to being transparent in how and when we use AI. When we do use something AI-generated, we ensure that it’s clearly labeled.
As someone who already does this (see ALT text of any images on this website to know what’s AI-generated and what’s not), I am in 100% agreement with and commitment to this new tenet. Let’s go over some of the trends in AI use and opinion that led me to this stance. My front-row seat to these trends came as I was building this business from scratch.
The Polarizing Landscape of Opinions on AI (And How They Hurt Esoteric Communities)
The fast-spreading adoption of AI use everywhere kicked in just about the time I began planning and launching Evylyn Rose LLC. As someone who stayed away from nearly all social media for years, having to dive back in as an entrepreneur with a business to build, two things quickly became obvious:
- AI content is so often liked and reshared that algorithms spread it like wildfire. (Even slop.)
- People have very strong opinions about it.
It’s those very opinions that worry me because they demonstrate a clear all-or-nothing or black-and-white mental trap. Especially when it comes to spiritual communities, that’s a trap we have to break out of. So let’s explore some of the common opinions on AI.
An AI-generated slop visual that was meant to provide something I could use for a webpage on the topic of Pentacles in Wicca. Note the pentacle's candles. 🤦
“Oh my god! I love AI! I use it for everything!”
Oh my gods! Don’t!
First thing you must know about current AI that’s free and accessible to the public: Not all AI is created equally. They have different training sets. They have different programmers. They have different rules. They have different levels of accuracy, nuance, and base reasoning.
For context:
- Every human is a human. Every human shares the same biological programming.
- This same thinking applies to animals (e.g. every cat is a cat, every dog is a dog, etc.). There are variances between individuals, but they’re relatively the same at the “programming” level.
Every AI is NOT the same at the base programming level. In the same way every human is a human, every conversation you have with a particular AI model is like talking to a different person. In other words, every conversation you have with Perplexity is a Perplexity. It’s not the same “person” in every conversation, just the same “species”.
Meanwhile, having a conversation with Perplexity is NOT the same as having a conversation with ChatGPT. That’s like expecting a conversation with one cat and one dog to be the same level of quality, accuracy, and knowledge. The dog doesn’t know what the cat knows. And the cat could care less what the dog knows. They simply know what they know and will make up whatever to fill in the gaps.
If you’re using AI for everything, that’s like handing over the reins of all your thinking to someone else who just happens to be an irresponsible and negligent caretaker. Just. Do you sometimes, okay?
An AI-generated visual intended for use with a Tarot-themed blog post. Only totally missed the mark of the intended prompt.
“AI is evil. And I want nothing to do with anyone who uses it.”
What strikes me most about this stance is where it comes from. I most often see this sentiment expressed from marginalized individuals and communities upset that their work is or may be stolen. Or their livelihoods cheapened in some way.
I get that.
What I don’t get, though, is that this hardline, anti-AI stance with no grey areas is an absolute stance. It’s a “Here’s my non-negotiable boundary. Now go away.” And it’s coming from the very people who pride themselves as open-minded, compassionate, and friendly toward differing worldviews.
If you fall under this line of thinking, your views on AI and AI-use is vital to the conversation! Please don’t shut yourself out of it. We need your input if we’re going to find ways of navigating this modern world ethically and respectfully.
AI clearly not knowing anything about context, traditional symbolism, or how to pretend to be a Tarot expert when prompted to create a Temperance card.
“I can’t do what I do without using AI.”
Yes you can. But also, I hear you. Especially for small business owners, solopreneurs, and creatives who freelance (read: have to market themselves in this loud, noisy world).
Would I be as far along in my business and maintain it all on my own with no assistance if I didn’t have AI to lean on as needed? Possibly, but I’d also be a drained, burned out wreck from the endless nights of ditching sleep and self-care for creating all the things. No ethical spiritual leader should ever allow themselves to turn into that.
I cringe whenever I hear people say that they can’t run their business without AI because my brain’s immediate response is, “Then why are you trying to run a business?” AI as it is now is minutes old. Its precursors, months old. Many models are still catching up from where the most advanced AI was just a couple years ago, and they are about as dumb as a box of rocks most days.
If you’re that dependent on AI to stay in business, then you may want to consider if you should be in business. Unless you’re an AI business, AI should assist you in your business ventures. But you need to be the expert. Not the AI.
AI failing miserably to understand how bodies work, even when given an actual photograph for reference. Is she admiring the cards? Or the creepy hands? 😱
“Everything is AI slop these days. None of it is real.”
Oh, my goodness. Please stop saying this. There are people who take it literally as fact rather than the feeling I suspect it was meant to portray.
I’m someone who’s verbose and academically educated (read: I sometimes forget to type like a natural human being while providing gloriously long strings of thought). When I first came across the AI-written articles and social posts that weren’t labeled as such, I got excited. Finally! People who write like me!
But they didn’t and they don’t. The AI wrote it. AI often sounds like me when I get all teachy, preachy, and academic. And I’m not the only one. It’s among the few styles of clear, educated, and professional writing that AI is trained on for its output.
So now that we’ve all gotten really good about spotting AI writing versus actual people writing, people are very quick to misinterpret actual, fully authentic human writing as AI-generated. It can feel like everything is just AI slop, but quite a lot of it still has very real humans behind it all.
On that note, let’s talk about my very real human journey to developing my AI-use ethically.
How I Use AI as a Spiritual Leader
Like most people, I toyed around and used AI for all kinds of stuff when I first dove in. Mostly, it was curiosity, trying to understand how things worked. My tech savviness often comes from exploration and tinkering than reading stuffy manuals or watching how-to videos.
My first regular use of AI was while I was still teaching high school students. I was notoriously terrible at writing timely emails home to parents. Partly because of the insane workload. But also because some emotional challenges mean the time it takes me to fully calm down to write that rational and professional email is beyond the reasonable amount of time between a concern and when I contractually should write home. So ChatGPT became my email-writing buddy.
In those emotionally charged moments, I’d write out all that happened and all that I’d want to say. I’d type it into ChatGPT, give it the context, and then ask it to help me “revise it to be both concise and professional”. About 90% of the time, ChatGPT would get the nuances of the concerns mixed up and I’d have to do a very clear rewrite of my own. But 100% it was exactly what the parent and student needed from me at the moment. Not my emotionally charged garbled words that I was limited to at the time.
So as I set up my business on my way out of the classroom, I tinkered more. Images. Aesthetic visuals. Rewriting my drafts to be professional.
As I learned, ChatGPT is terrible about watering down one’s voice no matter how many times you give it writing samples to work with. It treats all business-related materials like it’s a corporate business, missing the nuanced context of metaphysical and esoteric audiences. I lost count of the hours spent going back and having to rewrite so much from scratch to get it back to me.
Experimenting with other AI models, I found DeepSeek to be particularly good with spiritual and esoteric nuances. When I’ve leaned too heavily on it, my writing loses a little of its edge. But it doesn’t give me flashbacks to the grey cubicles of federal government offices. For the most part, anything involving AI writing at Evylyn Rose LLC is assisted with DeepSeek, and AI-generated images are most often through Canva.
A not-what-I-was-looking-for but otherwise actually decent AI image.
Shortly after writing this post, AI LLM drift across free models caused me to adjust my use. As of July 2026, DeepSeek became unusable for any practical purposes. I am actively experimenting with other possible tools to assist with writing/editing/brainstorming, while also returning to notably less active use of AI. This article will be updated.
What does typical AI use at Evylyn Rose LLC look like?
- General Brainstorming - Additional ideas for article topics, workshop titles, breaking out of my own mental loops, rearranging outlines, etc.
- Editing and Rephrasing Suggestions - I purposefully instruct the AI I’m working with to “offer point-by-point suggestions only” so that I can make any changes myself.
- “Mining” My Writing for Social Posts - I’m not a natural at social media marketing. (I don’t even like social media!) So I've tried AI-generated ideas based on my writing.
- Pages for learn.evylynrose.com - Thinkific auto-generates pages initially. Although I can–and do–edit, I sometimes actually prefer the verbiage offered. (Note: The course content and digital downloads are all me!)
- Various Analytics - Predominately within platforms (e.g. Search Console, YouTube, etc.), I'll make use of the AI-based chat tools to ensure I'm understanding the data and/or troubleshooting technical, behind-the-scenes stuff. Third-party business tools are also helpful for business-related research and market trends that have nothing to do with content creation.
- Creating Visuals for Webpages - The undeniable objective data is clear: Humans hate text-only pages. Although some of us prefer written text (me!) and some prefer video format, all of us spend more time on pages that include pictures, diagrams, and/or videos.
- So whenever I write a blog post for you, I have to include pretty pictures or other visuals. While I can make diagrams and infographics on my own, I’m not a photographer or image creator. (I’ve dabbled. It’s not pretty.) I don’t have an affordable, reliable artist on standby to create images on my ADHD-procrastinating timeline. So I enlist AI (typically Canva) and stock images in those moments.
On that last point, I would absolutely love to partner with an artist or multiple artists to have visuals I can use again and again for Evylyn Rose LLC and Messages in the Moonlight. At this time, I don’t have the budget for commissions. But I (not AI!) write fabulously detailed reviews, testimonials, and letters of recommendation.
So if you really hate the overuse of AI on the internet today, let’s talk and come up with a plan to fix it, together.
In Light & Love, Evylyn
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