Critics of AI-generated artwork have a strong new ally: His Holiness the Bishop of Rome (Episcopus Romanus), Primate of Italy (Primatus Italiae), and Supreme Pontiff of the Common Church (Summus Pontifex Ecclesiae Universalis).
In a post on X Friday morning, Pope Leo XIV detailed the religious distinction between human-generated artwork and artwork that’s generated by machines, as a part of a name to protect human artwork from the encroachment of AI.
“On this period of synthetic intelligence, it’s turning into pressing to differentiate human artwork from what machines produce,” the Servus Servorum Dei wrote. “There may be an ontological distinction, even earlier than an aesthetic one, between artwork and what a machine can generate by means of statistical calculation based mostly on hundreds of thousands of photos created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity.”
Pope Leo XIV gave a extra detailed assertion on AI in an encyclical letter in May, which emphasised the significance of human dignity in a world of accelerating automation.
However that hasn’t stopped AI corporations from lobbying the supreme pontiff. In keeping with a recent New York Times report, Anthropic has actively lobbied the Vatican to rethink its place on non-human consciousness — apparently discovering little success.