VATICAN (CNS): Pope Leo XIV’s message for the World Day of Communications [on May 17] warned against the unchecked influence of technology and artificial intelligence [AI] on human dignity, creativity, and communication. Released on January 24—the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists—the message urged humanity not to let “technology, especially AI, overshadow or suppress human voices, needs, knowledge, creativity, and critical thinking.”
The 2026 theme, “Preserving human voices and faces,” underscores the pope’s focus on safeguarding each person’s unique, God-given dignity and diversity. He said, “The challenge is not technological, but anthropological. Protecting faces and voices ultimately means protecting ourselves.”
While digital technology and AI bring opportunities, the pope insisted they must be embraced “with courage, determination and discernment,” and not used passively or uncritically.
Pope Leo highlighted the dangers of algorithms designed to maximise engagement on social media. These can trap users in “bubbles” of consensus and outrage, “undermining critical thinking and increasing polarisation.”
Giving up the creative process and surrendering our mental capacities and imagination to machines means burying the talents we have received to grow as people in relation to God and others. It means hiding our face and silencing our voice
He noted that such algorithms “reward knee-jerk emotions and penalise more time-consuming human expressions such as the effort to understand and reflect.”
A “naively uncritical reliance on artificial intelligence as an omniscient ‘friend’,” he cautioned, erodes our capacity “to understand, analyse, and think creatively.”
The pope further warned: “Giving up the creative process and surrendering our mental capacities and imagination to machines means burying the talents we have received to grow as people in relation to God and others. It means hiding our face and silencing our voice.”
Without safeguards, he warned, “digital technology risks radically altering some of the fundamental pillars of human civilisation” by simulating “human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, awareness and responsibility, empathy and friendship.”
Pope Leo cautioned against allowing AI to dominate creative fields, turning “masterpieces of human genius” into “mere training grounds for machines.” The creative industry, he feared, could be “replaced by products ‘Powered by AI’, turning people into passive consumers of ‘unthought thoughts, anonymous products, without authorship, without love.’”
…digital technology risks radically altering some of the fundamental pillars of human civilisation…
He raised concerns about “bots” and “virtual influencers” shaping public debate, and warned against “anthropomorphising” AI, which can imitate human emotions and deceive or exploit vulnerable individuals. Replacing real relationships with AI, he wrote, created a “world of mirrors” and deprived people of the chance “to encounter others, who are always different from us, and with whom we can and must learn to engage.”
AI’s ability to “hallucinate” and fabricate reality, he said, increased the difficulty of distinguishing fact from fiction, posing “a great risk to journalism.” The decline of on-the-ground reporting and lack of verification “can create even more fertile ground for disinformation, causing a growing sense of mistrust, confusion and insecurity.”
The pope warned of the danger of a “handful of companies” controlling data and being able to “subtly influence behaviour and even rewrite human history—including the history of the Church—often without us even realising it.”
He urged, “not to stop digital innovation, but to guide it,” and to “raise our voices in defence of human beings, so that these tools can truly be integrated as our allies.”
Media companies, Pope Leo insisted, must not let algorithms override their professional values: “Public trust is earned through accuracy and transparency, not by chasing after any kind of engagement.”
He called for clear labelling of AI-generated material and protection of authorship and copyright, emphasising, “Information is a public good… not based on opacity, but on transparency of sources, inclusion of stakeholders and high standards of quality.”
He concluded: “We need faces and voices to represent people again. We need to cherish the gift of communication as the deepest truth of humanity, to which all technological innovation should be oriented.”
