Vatican warns of AI risks, urges humans to stay in control

The Vatican has warned that artificial intelligence (AI) can generate misleading, manipulative, and harmful information while urging that humans remain in the drivers seat as the technology develops.

The call from the Holy See, the central governing body of the Catholic Church and Vatican City, came with the announcement on Monday of the theme chosen by Pope Leo XIV for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, to be celebrated in 2026.

The theme, “preserving human voices and faces,” aims to explore communication ecosystems and how technology increasingly influences interactions, from algorithms curating news feeds to AI authoring entire texts and conversations.

“Humanity today has possibilities that were unimaginable just a few years ago. But while these tools offer efficiency and reach, they cannot replace the uniquely human capacities for empathy, ethics and moral responsibility,” said the Vatican. “Public communication requires human judgment, not just data patterns. The challenge is to ensure that humanity remains the guiding agent.”

This is the topic chosen by the Pope for next year’s World Day of Social Communications, an annual Catholic observance established by Pope Paul VI in 1967 to highlight the importance of communication media and encourage people to reflect on the opportunities and challenges of modern means of communication, and ultimately, to promote human dignity and the Gospel.

The theme of the previous (59th) World Day of Social Communications, chosen by former Pope Francis and held in January of this year, was “share with gentleness the hope that is in your hearts.” In his message for the day, Pope Francis lamented the “disinformation and polarization” that characterizes communication in our times—the post-truth era, for short—saying that communication should generate hope, not “fear and despair, prejudice and resentment, fanaticism and even hatred.”

For next year’s event Pope Leo XIV has similarly decided to tackle disinformation, but this time of the machine-made variety. According to the Vatican, the timely choice of AI as the theme was inspired by the “great opportunities” as well as the “real” risks that the technology presents for the future of communication.

“The future of communication must be one where machines serve as tools that connect and facilitate human lives, rather than erode the human voice,” said the announcement.

It went on to warn that AI can “generate engaging but misleading, manipulative and harmful information, replicate biases and stereotypes from its training data, and amplify disinformation through simulation of human voices and faces. It can also invade people’s privacy and intimacy without their consent.”

Of particular concern to the Church was how AI may affect the development and interactions of younger generations.