Can Artificial Intelligence-Based Counseling Improve Iranian Students' Spiritual Well-Being?

The advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) technology has provided new opportunities to promote spiritual health. This study aimed to compare artificial intelligence-based counseling with face-to-face counseling on the spiritual well-being of medical students at Arak University of Medical Sciences. This was a quasi-experimental study conducted on 105 undergraduate medical students at Arak University of Medical Sciences, Iran, in 2025. Participants were divided into three groups of 35. One group received counseling in the traditional manner and the other group received counseling using artificial intelligence. No intervention was required for the control group. Data were collected using a spiritual well-being questionnaire before and after the intervention and analyzed using SPSS software. The response rate was 100%, with all enrolled participants completing the study. The finding demonstrated that there were no statistically significant differences in mean spiritual well-being scores among the three groups prior to the intervention. The total score for spiritual well-being and its religious subdimension showed statistically significant increases after the intervention in the AI counseling group compared to before intervention (P < 0.05). No significant changes were observed in other variables. Artificial intelligence-based spiritual counseling significantly increased students' spiritual well-being, especially their religious dimension, and overall had a significant advantage over the control group, although no significant difference was seen with the traditional counseling group. The use of AI can play an effective role in promoting students' spiritual well-being.