--- title: "The Amish Are Embracing ChatGPT" description: "The Amish are embracing OpenAI's ChatGPT, saying that it helps them carry out tasks for their often family-owned businesses." date: "2026-05-23" modified: "2026-05-23" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/amish-chatgpt" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "Future Society" --- # The Amish Are Embracing ChatGPT ![A family dressed in traditional Amish clothing is walking away from the camera. The man wears a white straw hat, white shirt, and black vest, while the woman is in a long black dress with a white bonnet. Three children, barefoot and wearing purple dresses with white aprons and bonnets, accompany them. The background is a pixelated green and yellow pattern.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* AI is reportedly making inroads in a famously tech-cautious community: the Amish. According [to a fascinating story by *New York Magazine*](), the men of Holmes County, Ohio's Amish community — the area with the largest concentration of Amish people in the country — have embraced generative AI as a new tool to do things like write emails, draft contracts, create spreadsheets, and otherwise manage their oft-family-run businesses in fields like manufacturing, construction, and agriculture. "I started using it soon after it came out, more or less testing it," Ian Wengerd, an Amish father-of-six who owns a metal-fabrication company, told *NY Mag*. "The more I used it, the more I thought this could actually be a good thing." Wengerd, whose business employs about 30 staffers, explained to the magazine that his business gets "involved in some state work, federal work, private work." In other words, he's busy — and he says that without tech, chatbots included, he and his many employees would be out of a job. "For us to try to do business with just a fax machine and a voicemail," said Ian, "I'd have to shut my doors." Not all Amish folk enjoy access to the internet, and when they do, it's generally quite limited. (One expert, historian Marcus Yoder, told *NY Mag* that he believes that fewer than half of Holmes County's Amish population is online, and of that population, he estimates that under 10 percent have given AI a whirl.) Not a single person *NY Mag* spoke with uses a smartphone; they either use zhuzh-ed up "dumb phones" or flip phones. Their digital life is also heavily filtered through Christian censoring services and almost entirely restricted to the workplace. But media censorship aside, that stark line between the workplace and the home, interestingly, seems to make for some healthy technological boundaries. "I can't lay in bed for half an hour asking Chat stuff. So the times when I'm vulnerable it's not at my fingertips," Ian's cousin John Wengerd, a 19-year-old chicken salesman and property manager, told the magazine. "When I go home, I'm riding a horse or feeding chickens." This narrow but optimistic adoption of chatbots, as described by the men interviewed, does [track with the religious community's historic approach]() to emerging tech, if and where it adopts it. It's an overwhelmingly utilitarian outlook, and though most AI users likely aren't able to jump on a horse at the end of the workday to help whittle down their screen time, maybe take [their approach as a reminder]() that AI [shouldn't be]() a [constant companion](). "I don't want to paint a picture that we're pushing for new technology and we don't have respect for our traditions and our values," business owner and minister Daniel Wengerd — indeed, another cousin — told *NY Mag*. "We're not just opening the door to anything." That said, according to the piece, Daniel *did* use ChatGPT to write his wife a Valentine's note. **More on AI and religion:** *[A Bunch of Incredibly Sleazy AI Apps Are Claiming to Be Jesus Christ Himself]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()