“Turn ye not unto idols, nor make to yourselves molten god. I am the Lord.” Is this a real bit from the Bible or ChatGPT? It’s getting increasingly harder to tell what’s real and what’s not in the age of AI. All around, various people are building AI copies of themselves and, apparently, they also wanted to do this with the Pope. The Pope, however, wasn’t into it.
“Someone recently asked authorization to create an artificial me,” said Pope Leo XIV. “This artificial intelligence pope would give them answers to their questions, and I said, ‘I’m not going to authorize that.’”
The quote, first published in a biography by Crux journalist Elise Ann Allen, has come to define Leo’s early papacy. Three months into the role, he’s made clear that while the Church is not opposed to technological progress, there are boundaries—especially when it comes to spiritual representation.
“If there’s anybody who should not be represented by an avatar, I would say the pope is high on the list,” Leo added.
AI Blurs Reality and Fakes
Pope Leo’s main concern is about what happens when the sacred is filtered through the synthetic. An AI copy would be an imitation, and a highly imperfect one at that.
“In the world of medicine, great things have happened thanks to AI,” he said, as per CNA. “However, there is a danger in this, because you end up creating a false world and then you ask yourself: What is the truth?”
He’s seen the false world already. We’ve all seen instances where AI went off the rails and started hallucinating and creating misinformation. In one instance, a convincingly doctored video showed the pope tumbling down a flight of stairs—something that never actually happened.
“One day, talking to someone, [the person] asked me: ‘Are you OK?’ And I said: ‘Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?’ ‘Well, you fell down a flight of stairs.’ I said: ‘No, I didn’t fall,’” he recalled. “But there was a video somewhere where they had created this artificial pope, me, falling… and apparently it was so good that they thought it was me.”
For Pope Leo, this was a cautionary tale.
“The temptation is for people to believe it, and they believe it because there seems to be a need in some people to receive it,” he said. “People want to believe in conspiracies, people want to seek out all these false things, and that is very destructive.”
A Human Institution in a Machine Age
Since his election in May, Pope Leo has returned to one theme again and again: humanity. In the age of AI, the problem is more poignant than ever He warns of a digital world that “will follow its own path and we will become pawns, or be brushed aside.”
He’s especially concerned about AI’s influence on children and young people. Earlier this year, he spoke of “the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development.” During his first phone call with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the pontiff discussed the need for ethical AI that serves humanity.
The pontiff’s worries also reach into economics and ethics.
“Human dignity has a very important relationship with the work that we do,” he said. “If we automate the whole world and only a few people have the means … there’s a big problem, a huge problem coming down the line.”
Those few people (namely tech billionaires) have also drawn his ire.
“If the Church doesn’t speak up, or if someone doesn’t speak up about that… the danger is that the digital world will go on its own way,” he warned, calling out the “extremely wealthy” for investing heavily in AI while “totally ignoring the value of human beings and humanity.” In one of his first interviews as pope, he focused on the ultra-rich and the gap between the rich and the poor.
A Warning, Not a Rejection
For the Vatican, this is about adapting to new times without losing the soul of the Church. Could AI ever embody the moral authority of a living, breathing pope? According to Leo XIV, the answer is no. Not because AI isn’t intelligent enough, but because something essential would be lost: the spiritual and ethical weight of a human presence.
But others may not see as clear a line. At any rate, Pope Leo isn’t calling for a ban on AI. He’s calling for discernment and adequate use.
“I’m not at all against artificial intelligence,” he stated. But unchecked, he believes it threatens to erode what it means to be human—and, by extension, what it means to be holy.
It’s hard not to empathize with his take. As AI seeps deeper into everyday life, it’s easy to imagine religion being next. An AI-generated priest to hear your confession. A chatbot theologian to answer your doubts. An artificial pope to bless your screen.
Technology is threatening to mix with our very souls. Pope Leo seems to believe that’s a problem: “It’s going to be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI.”
