Pope Leo says AI lacks the "spark of humanity" — and wants artists and the church to fight back

Pope Leo XIV called Friday for the church to form an alliance with artists to protect human creativity during an era of AI-generated content. Why it matters: Though he has acknowledged the technology's potential benefits, the pope continues to warn that AI progress cannot come at the expense of human dignity. The statement comes after the New York Times reported on Anthropic's efforts to confer with religious scholars to infuse religious morals into Claude. What he's saying: "In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce," the pope wrote on X. "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 said the Catholic Church is calling for "an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity." Zoom out: Leo has spoken out against AI before, specifically around how the technology could influence and potentially harm humanity. In the first encyclical of his papacy, he said there was a need to "disarm" the technology to prevent it "from dominating humanity." In May, the pope established a Vatican commission on AI to coordinate the church's policies and work around the technology. Last week, he warned of a "paradise of machines" invading and taking over our daily activities. He also said that recent warnings from AI researchers should be "taken seriously." "We have to keep working. We can't sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen," he told reporters in late September. Flashback: The late Pope Francis also warned that AI potentially risked reducing humans into data points.

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