AI: fake popes and fake bishops make the Church speak in its place, and the Vatican responds

What is reported

Since the election of Leo XIV (May 2025), the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication has flagged hundreds of accounts, mostly on YouTube, that make the pope speak through artificial intelligence; it receives “dozens of reports every day”. Most of these videos get no more than a few hundred views, but one reached at least a million before the account was closed. Vatican instruction: check any quotation on the official sites (September 2025). In South Korea, the bishops’ conference flagged on 8 December 2025 fake videos of the Archbishop of Seoul and the Bishop of Masan asking for donations; some of the faithful sent money. In Cyprus, the Bishop of Morphou filed a complaint on 12 June 2026 against an AI video making him speak. In January 2025, the Holy See published “Antiqua et nova”: AI is “a tool, not a person” (§ 59), it must never be presented as a person (§ 62), it gives “the illusion” of speaking, and claiming to put a human-made artifact in the place of God is idolatry (§ 105). Precedents: the image of Pope Francis in a puffer jacket, generated by AI in March 2023 and seen by millions of people; and “Deus in Machina”, an avatar of Jesus set up as an experiment in St. Peter’s Chapel in Lucerne (August-October 2024), with about 900 conversations.