Critics of AI-generated art have gained a powerful new ally: His Holiness Pope Leo XIV.
On Friday morning, the Pope utilized X to articulate the spiritual and ontological distinction between art created by humans and that generated by machines. He emphasized the need to protect human creativity from the encroachment of artificial intelligence.
“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,” the Pope wrote. He further noted that algorithms lack the spark of humanity.
This position was reinforced in a May encyclical letter where the Pope highlighted the significance of human dignity in an era of increasing automation. However, AI companies have attempted to sway these views. According to a recent report in The New York Times, Anthropic actively lobbied the Vatican to reconsider its stance on non-human consciousness, though the efforts appeared unsuccessful.
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