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AXIOS (Herb Scribner) - Pope Leo says AI lacks the "spark of humanity" — and wants artists and the church to fight back Sat Oct 3 13:29:04 2026

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.