Pope Leo XIV called on the Catholic church to “renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions” in a post condemning AI-generated art on Friday.
“Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity,” Leo told followers Friday morning on X.
Leo’s message follows rapid advances in artificial intelligence, with politicians and some industry leaders calling for guardrails. Leo previously warned that AI could go rogue.
He further detailed his stance on the technology in a lengthy letter published in May, stating that “human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human.”
“We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace,” the Pope continued in the May letter. “True progress always stems from a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates.”
According to a survey conducted by Pew Research earlier this year, U.S. adults are generally concerned about how AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships with others.
Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, has also recently met with religious leaders to argue that its language could be conscious, the New York Times reported.
President Donald Trump, who regularly posts AI art slop, has called the concerns a “HOAX.” Earlier this year, Trump drew widespread criticism after posting an AI-generated image depicting himself as a Christ-like figure. He later claimed it was meant to show him as a doctor.
“In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce,” Leo said Friday. “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.”