E-Prosiding Persidangan Serantau Manasik Haji 2025 (MANASIK2025)

MANASIK2025 Putrajaya, Malaysia, 7-8 Oktober 2025 647 training. Recent studies highlight the benefits of these systems. Researchers have shown that when chatbots are carefully designed for learning, they can improve understanding, increase motivation, and make users more engaged (Saleh et al., 2025; Guizani et al., 2025; Bai & Wang, 2025). For pilgrims, this means that an AI-powered assistant could serve not only as a guide during rituals but also as a teacher during preparation, helping thempractice and review steps before the actual journey. By combining modern technology with authentic religious knowledge, these tools have the potential to transform the way pilgrims learn and perform Hajj and Umrah. The pilgrimage has unique challenges as it requires correct religious guidance, avoiding wrong or made-up answers, supporting many languages, and giving real-time help at the location. New studies in 2025 on Islamic law and fatwa question-answering show both the potential of large language models and the importance of careful methods such as using retrieval-augmented generation, safety checks, and expert guidance (Saleh et al., 2025; Rabb, 2025). Even though many courses, guides, and mobile applications are available for Hajj and Umrah, pilgrim both first-time and returning; continue to face significant challenges. Studies and testimonies highlight that many pilgrims struggle to follow the required rituals correctly in highly crowded situations. For example, a large survey of pilgrims reported that getting lost and feeling overwhelmed in congested areas was among the most common negative experiences during Hajj (Quaium et al., 2023). Personal accounts also confirm this difficulty, with pilgrims describing panic attacks, faintness, and anxiety during rituals such as Tawaf due to overcrowding and confusion (Reddit, 2023a; Reddit, 2025a). Another issue is the difficulty of finding reliable answers quickly, especially when different schools of thought (madhāhib) apply. Some pilgrims reported that guides were not qualified to provide accurate religious advice, leaving them uncertain during critical moments. One review noted that many guides lacked religious training, gave wrong advice, or were unavailable to support pilgrims during rituals (Reddit, 2024). This shows that even with human guidance, access to trustworthy and immediate religious clarification remains a challenge. While mobile apps have been developed to support Hajj and Umrah, most primarily provide static information such as ritual tutorials, maps, or language translations. Research shows that these applications largely function as reference tools, without the ability to adapt dynamically to a pilgrim’s real-time situation or prevent common mistakes (Khan & Shambour, 2017). More broadly, studies on mobile app reliability note that most apps lack context-awareness, runtime adaptability, and event handling, which limits their usefulness in complex and changing environments like Hajj. These studies show that current courses, guides, and apps are still not enough to meet the real and changing needs of pilgrims. The main thingmissing is support that is personal, flexible, and available in real time, to help pilgrims follow both the practical steps and the religious rules of Hajj and Umrah. Generative AI in education has already shown that it can be useful for giving feedback, helping users think better, and improving results. However, these benefits only happen when the AI’s responses are good quality, carefully checked, and supported by human involvement (Bai & Wang, 2025; Guizani et al., 2025). The bigger problem is not the amount of content available, but the lack of a trusted and specialized smart chatbot. Such a chatbot should learn from reliable sources, follow legal and religious rules, find and correct mistakes, and work well with Saudi Arabia’s 2025 digital pilgrimage system to provide help exactly when pilgrims need it (Saudi Press Agency [SPA], 2025a).