ISLAMIC ETHICS AND THE CRISIS OF DIGITAL INTEGRITY: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF TRUTH, DECEPTION AND RESPONSIBILITY IN THE AGE OF GENERATIVE AI

Author: Indonesia

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) can now produce fluent text, realistic images and convincing audio at almost no cost, and it does so without any commitment to truth. This has created a crisis of digital integrity: fabricated content is hard to distinguish from authentic content, machine outputs present invented claims as fact, and it is unclear who should answer for the resulting harm. Mainstream AI ethics has responded with principles such as transparency and accountability, but these frameworks draw mainly on Western philosophical traditions and treat deception largely as a technical or regulatory problem. Islamic scholarship on AI has grown quickly, yet most of it addresses AI in general through maqasid al-shariah, and its treatment of misinformation relies almost entirely on the receiver's duty of tabayyun (verification). This concept paper critically analyses truth, deception and responsibility in generative AI through Islamic ethics. Using conceptual analysis and theory adaptation, it synthesises the empirical literature on synthetic media with Qur'anic, prophetic and juristic concepts. It argues that Islamic ethics offers an integrated account built on three pillars: sidq (truthfulness) as a duty owed by every speaker and publisher, the prohibition of ghish, tadlis and kadhib (deception, concealment and falsehood) as limits on design and deployment, and amanah and mas'uliyyah (trust and answerability) as a model of responsibility that always returns to a human agent. The paper proposes a Digital Integrity Framework that distributes these duties across developers, deployers, users and regulators, and offers suggestions for policy, education and future research.