Pope Leo XIV has warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence in relation to the proliferation of “junk” information and news that results in a "quicksand of approximation and post-truth", all of which exacerbates what the the pontiff refers to as “the ancient art of lying”.
In a speech to media representatives at the Vatican on Thursday, 9 October, Pope Leo called on his audience to push back against an increasingly “post-truth” world, urging journalists to act as a "bulwark" against “the ancient art of lying” and resist the growing scourge of “clickbait” articles and news fuelled by artificial intelligence, reports The Times.
“Artificial intelligence is changing the way we receive information and communicate, but who directs it and for what purposes?” said Leo, who has repeatedly highlighted the dangers of AI since becoming head of the Catholic Church. He also warned journalists against their organisations and websites posting “clickbait” articles to boost audience numbers at the cost of publishing serious news.
“I urge you, never sell out your authority,” said the Pope, adding that solid reporting was “an antidote to the proliferation of ‘junk’ information” while emphasising that “the world needs free, rigorous and objective information”.
He added: “With your patient and rigorous work, you can act as a barrier against those who, through the ancient art of lying, seek to create divisions in order to rule by dividing. You can also be a bulwark of civility against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth.”
Leo cited the argument made by the 20th-century German philosopher Hannah Arendt that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist”.
The Pope has made a point of addressing journalists about the changing media landscape of the modern world. In May, Leo told an audience of journalists at the Vatican to refrain in their reporting from “prejudice, resentment, fanaticism and even hatred”.
He has also previously spoken about how he chose the name Leo in response to the "new revolution" in artificial intelligence.
The Pope said there were various reasons for why he chose his papal name “but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution”.
Rerum Novarum ("New Things") is an encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 addressing the conditions of the working classes and which deals with various social issues. It is widely hailed as having laid out the framework for the Catholic Church’s modern social doctrine and its position on social issues, which were a bedrock of Pope Francis’s pontificate.
“In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour,” Leo said.
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Photo: Pope Leo XIV presides over a Mass for the Jubilee of Consecrated Life in St. Peter's square at the Vatican 9 October 2025. (Photo by MARIA GRAZIA PICCIARELLA/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images.)
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