Critics of AI generative art have welcomed a powerful new ally: the Bishop of Rome (Episcopus Romanus), the Chief Bishop of Italy (Primatus Italiae), and the Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church (Summus Pontifex Ecclesiae Universalis), whose title is Pope Leo XIV.
On Friday morning, Pope Leo XIV published a statement on X, detailing the spiritual differences between human-created art and machine-generated art, and called for the protection of human art from the erosion of AI.
"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming increasingly urgent to distinguish between human art and content generated by machines," writes this "servant of servants" ( Servus Servorum Dei ). "Before any aesthetic differences, there is first and foremost an ontological difference: art and the content generated by machines through statistical calculations of millions of images created by others are not the same. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity."
In an encyclical issued in May of this year, Pope Leo XIV made a more detailed statement regarding AI, emphasizing the importance of human dignity in a world where automation is deepening day by day.
However, this did not stop AI from lobbying this supreme pontiff. According to a recent report by The New York Times, Anthropic has been actively lobbying the Vatican, requesting it to reconsider its stance on non-human consciousness – but apparently with little success.
