Pope Leo XIV: ‘It’s going to be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI’

In Pope Leo XIV’s first sit-down interview, published in Spanish on Sept. 18, 2025, the pope warned of the loss of humanity in the digital world of artificial intelligence (AI). / Credit: Daniel Ibañez/EWTN News

Vatican City, Sep 22, 2025 / 14:09 pm (CNA).

Pope Leo XIV revealed in his first interview since being elected pontiff that it’s going to be “very difficult to discover the presence of God” in artificial intelligence (AI), noting that he recently refused a proposal to create an avatar of himself.

He pointed to the loss of humanity in the digital realm and warned that “extremely wealthy” people are investing in AI and “totally ignoring the value of human beings and humanity.”

“The danger is that the digital world will follow its own path and we will become pawns, or be brushed aside,” he warned.

“I think the Church needs to speak out in this regard,” he stated.

During the interview, held on July 10 at Villa Barberini, the papal residence in Castel Gandolfo, and published on Sept. 18 in the Spanish-language book “Leo XIV: Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century,” Pope Leo made it clear that the Church “is not against technological advances,” but the “incredible pace” at which the technology is developing is “worrying.”

“In the world of medicine, great things have happened thanks to AI, and in other fields as well,” he said in the book. “However, there is a danger in this, because you end up creating a false world and then you ask yourself: What is the truth?”

However, he noted the problems created by AI fabrications in an era plagued by deepfakes (AI-created images, videos, or audio recordings) and even spoke of a personal case in which he was the victim of a fake video.

“In these few short three months as pope, one day, talking to someone, [the person] asked me: ‘Are you OK?’ And I said: ‘Yes, I’m fine. Why do you ask?’ ‘Well, you fell down a flight of stairs.’ I said: ‘No, I didn’t fall,’ but there was a video somewhere where they had created this artificial pope, me, falling down a flight of stairs as I was walking, and apparently it was so good that they thought it was me,” he said.

The Holy Father warned of the “great challenge” of fake news because “the temptation is for people to believe it, and they believe it because there seems to be a need in some people to receive it.” 

“Why are all these people consuming this fake news? Something is going on there. People want to believe in conspiracies, people want to seek out all these false things, and that is very destructive,” he added.

Similarly, he also revealed that someone recently asked him for permission to create an artificial version of himself, so “that anyone could go to a website and have a personal audience with ‘the pope,’ and this pope created by artificial intelligence would give them answers to their questions. I said, ‘I’m not going to authorize that.’ If there’s anyone who shouldn’t be represented by an avatar, it seems to me, it’s the pope,” he emphasized.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.