OpenAI, the developer behind popular generative artificial intelligence platform ChatGPT, will no longer discriminate against Christian groups after the company settled a lawsuit with a group that was denied certain business benefits for its religious affiliation.
The lawsuit was brought by Holy Sexuality, a Christian nonprofit focused on educating children and young families about the biblical principles behind human sexuality, which retained Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) as its attorneys. While all details of the settlement are private, legal counsel Mathew Hoffmann told The Federalist that not only will his client now have access to certain discounts offered to other groups, but OpenAI agreed to drop their discriminatory policy in its entirety.
Holy Sexuality, founded by Dr. Christopher Yuan, sued OpenAI over its overt policy to block religious organizations from a 20 percent discount to ChatGPT under its OpenAI for Nonprofits program, which partners with Goodstack — an organization that connects nonprofits with technology tools and resources.
Yuan sought to use ChatGPT to help translate literature and resources from Holy Sexuality to other languages in order to spread the Christian message about sexuality. He applied for the discount but was denied on religious grounds.
Prior to the lawsuit and settlement, OpenAI’s policy stated “academic, medical, religious, or governmental institutions are not eligible for OpenAI for Nonprofits.” As a result of the settlement, the language including religious institutions has been removed from the website. OpenAI also agreed never to pursue a similar policy in the future.
“This settlement certainly allows for religious groups to take advantage of this and use OpenAI’s products with the discount, which is great. I think what also the settlement sends is a message to other big tech companies that to the extent they have similar provisions, or to the extent they have bias against religious organizations, that they should revise and amend their policies to allow religious organizations equal treatment,” Hoffmann told The Federalist. “We certainly do hope that this settlement will encourage others to respect religious freedom as they should anyway.”
Partnering with ADF, Holy Sexuality favorably settled a similar case against another Big Tech company, Asana, which also has a nonprofit discount.
For Yuan, it is not about the money saved by the discount. He told The Federalist, “It’s the purpose. Because behind it, we’re not being treated the same as other regular corporations. And it’s interesting, because a lot of the other corporations, whether they are pro-abortion, or whether they are pro-LGBT, or pro-trans, or whatever, they have no issue getting these [benefits].”
When asked why OpenAI would have discriminated in the first place, both Hoffmann and Yuan were baffled. OpenAI did not return a request for comment from The Federalist.
“We have no idea what is OpenAI’s intent, but we can kind of anecdotally see what’s been a trend, and I’ve just noticed in my religious nonprofit over time, there have been tech companies that have just been refusing us,” Yuan said. “Some of the benefits that they give to all other corporations, even on social media ads that are just blocked for no reason — they call it proselytizing. For us, it’s just, we’re just doing what we’re called to do.”
According to ADF’s viewpoint diversity index, 54 percent of tech and finance companies prohibit religious nonprofits from receiving similar discounts or charitable support because of their religious status, Hoffmann said.
“It is somewhat part of a pattern in Big Tech that there are large, powerful voices who are hostile to religious liberty and hostile to free speech,” he said.
But the trend seems sinister, Yuan explained, adding, “It’s really based on what are some basic tenets that we see kind of consuming or saturating education and our workplace and our culture, and it has been leading philosophically to this critical theory, intersectionality, cultural Marxist view that we see everything through the lens of oppression.”
That is particularly true for Christians. While “it’s not applied consistently, because they will give it to Muslim groups … but they will deny it to a Christian organization,” Yuan said, “there’s a bent toward whether you represent the majority, and people here in the U.S. would say, well, Christians are the majority, so they’re the oppressors,” according to the left-wing ideology present in much of Big Tech.
And while that “has resulted in this animosity for people who are religious,” he added, Yuan and Hoffmann are hopeful that other tech companies will end their religious discrimination.