THE Pope has warned men not to fall for “excessively affectionate” AI chatbot girlfriends or face “painful consequences”.
Pope Leo XIV said it’s become “increasingly difficult to determine whether we are interacting with other human beings or with bots” in today’s digital world.
The pontiff issued a plea to Catholics on the World Day of Social Communications about the urgent importance of “preserving human voices and faces”.
And if people continue to turn to AI and fail to embrace others “there can be no relationships or friendships”.
“Faces and voices are sacred,” the Pope told believers.
“Digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilisation that at times are taken for granted.”
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Pope Leo warned that while such AI chatbots may be “entertaining” they are also “deceptive”, as he shared particular concern for the most vulnerable.
“Because chatbots are excessively ‘affectionate,’ as well as always present and accessible, they can become hidden architects of our emotional states and so invade and occupy our sphere of intimacy,” the Pope continued.
“Technology that exploits our need for relationships can lead not only to painful consequences in the lives of individuals, but also to damage in the social, cultural and political fabric of society.
“This occurs when we substitute relationships with others for AI systems that catalog our thoughts, creating a world of mirrors around us, where everything is made ‘in our image and likeness’.”
The Pope also used his message to hit out at social media companies and their algorithms.
These are “profitable for platforms” that “reward quick emotions and penalise more time-consuming human responses such as the effort required to understand and reflect,” the Pope explained.
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“These algorithms reduce our ability to listen and think critically, and increase social polarisation.”
He cautioned that the problem is further exacerbated by “a naive and unquestioning reliance on artificial intelligence as an omniscient ‘friend,’ a source of all knowledge, an archive of every memory, an ‘oracle’ of all advice”.
However, Pope Leo said that we shouldn’t stop digital innovation but instead “guide it and to be aware of its ambivalent nature”.
It’s not the first time Catholics have been warned about the dangers of AI.
Pope Leo’s predecessor, the late Pope Francis, said in 2024 that simulation technology becomes “perverse when it distorts our relationship with others and with reality”.
He pushed for more regulation of AI technology to prevent “harmful, discriminatory, and socially unjust effects.”
WHO IS POPE LEO XIV?
Robert Prevost was born in Chicago in 1955 to immigrant parents of French, Italian and Spanish descent.
After graduating from Villanova University in Pennsylvania with a degree in maths, the future pontiff joined the Order of St Augustine, taking his vows in 1978.
Ordained as a priest in 1982, he joined a mission in Peru where he spent many years heading up a seminary.
Returning to the US in 1999, he then met controversy when he allowed alleged child abuser Father James Ray to reside at a friary in Chicago.
He was made archbishop in 2023 and within a few months he was promoted to the cardinal by late Pope Francis.
Overall, the new pope is considered a centrist, however, on many social issues he has been hailed as progressive.
He has been seen to advocated for marginalized groups as the Francis did.
The multi-talented Catholic Church head can also speak English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese – and can even read Latin and German.
Image credit: Alamy
