Why We Shouldn’t Use AI to Caricature the Buddha or Buddhist Monks Inappropriately

Before Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha, He sacrificed many things including a luxurious lifestyle. He practiced extreme asceticism along the way to finding a path to end the cycle of rebirth. After He attained enlightenment, He began teaching people to end their suffering and to reach Nirvana. He continued this until the end of His life. His kindness is infinite.

Although He went to Nirvana more than 2,500 years ago, Buddhists still pay respect to Him and the symbols that represent Him, such as Buddha statues, pagodas and Buddhist monks, who are the third of the Triple Gem and who spread the Buddha’s teaching today. Therefore, Buddha images and Buddhist symbols are objects of homage for Buddhists, and they encourage us to practice His teaching to eventually end the cycle of rebirth.

However, there are people today who use AI technology to edit images of the Buddha and images of monks to make them look ridiculous. They put them in inappropriate clothes, make them perform inappropriate activities, put the head of the Buddha on someone else’s body, and so on. These individuals clearly have no understanding of what is right or appropriate, so we have prepared the following guidelines to explain why such images are totally unacceptable and inappropriate:

1. It degrades the Buddha and Buddhist monks. Using AI to inappropriately edit images of the Buddha and monks shows disrespect and constitutes an extreme insult to the Buddha.

2. It taints Buddhism. The Buddha is the prophet, and the monks are His disciples who spread His teaching. Creating inappropriate images of them damages Buddhism overall.

3. It hurts Buddhists tremendously because we revere the Buddha as our Father and pay great respect to the monks. These images make Buddhists feel dejected and even make other people with common sense feel uncomfortable.

4. It can cause other people to mimic the caricatures. Some might consider these kinds of images fun and might want to do the same. Therefore, this unacceptable behavior can spread and make the situation worse than it currently is.

5. It erodes individuals’ beliefs and causes Buddhism to decline. Such images might make people think that the story of the Buddha is just a fairy tale and that he never existed, thereby destroying people’s belief in Buddhism. In such an environment, how can Buddhism be passed on to the next generation?

Please respect the Buddha and stop inappropriately editing His images and those of Buddhist monks.