Pope Leo XIV on Friday urged the Catholic Church to form an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard human creativity amid the rise of AI-generated content.
While acknowledging potential benefits of the technology, the pope warned that AI progress must not come at the expense of human dignity. In a post on X, he wrote: "In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity."
Leo added that the Catholic Church is calling for "an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."
Why this matters now
The pope's statement follows reporting by the New York Times that Anthropic, an AI company, has engaged with religious scholars in efforts to incorporate religious moral perspectives into its Claude model. The pope has repeatedly expressed concerns that, despite useful applications, AI should not undermine human dignity.
Previous Vatican actions and warnings
Leo XIV has previously spoken out about the risks of AI. In the first encyclical of his papacy he argued for the need to "disarm" the technology to prevent it "from dominating humanity." In May, he established a Vatican commission on AI to coordinate the church's policies and work related to the technology. Last week he warned about a "paradise of machines" that could infiltrate and take over daily activities, and said that recent warnings from AI researchers should be "taken seriously."
Reflecting on the pace of change, he told reporters in late September: "We have to keep working. We can't sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen."
Broader context
Concerns about AI's impact on human identity are not new within the church: the late Pope Francis also warned that AI could risk reducing humans to mere data points. Leo XIV's latest appeal underscores the Vatican's intention to play an institutional role in defending human creativity and dignity as AI technologies evolve.
