AI Tool Certifies Pope Leo's Speeches as Human-Written

The verification comes weeks after the pontiff called artificial intelligence the greatest threat facing humanity

A collection of speeches and writings by Pope Leo XIV has been certified as human-authored by an Australian artificial intelligence detection company, less than two months after the pope declared AI the greatest threat to humanity, The Guardian reported.

The review was conducted by Proudly Human, a company led by Dr. Alan Finkel, Australia's former chief scientist, in collaboration with the writings' publisher, the Australian Catholic University and cardinals in the Vatican. The project, titled Maps of Hope, examined the pope's texts to confirm they were not generated or substantially assisted by AI tools.

The certification underscores an unusual moment in the debate over artificial intelligence's reach: even the leader of the Catholic Church, who has publicly warned about AI's dangers, is now subject to the same authorship-verification scrutiny increasingly applied to students, journalists and authors amid fears that AI-generated text is flooding public discourse. The involvement of the Vatican and a major Catholic university in the vetting process reflects how seriously church officials are treating questions about the authenticity of the pope's public statements as AI-generated writing becomes harder to distinguish from human work.

— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.