January 30, 2026 // Pope Leo XIV

Pope: Let Humans, Not AI, Lead Communication Efforts

OSV NEWS

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Humanity must not allow technology, especially AI, to obscure, exploit, or suppress human voices, needs, knowledge, talents, creativity, and critical thinking abilities, Pope Leo XIV wrote in his message for the World Day of Communications.

Algorithms designed to maximize engagement on social media can lock people into “bubbles” of easy consensus and rage, weakening people’s ability to listen and think critically and increasing polarization, the pope wrote.

“Added to this is a naively uncritical reliance on artificial intelligence as an omniscient ‘friend,’ a dispenser of all information, an archive of all memory, an ‘oracle’ of all advice,” which can also further erode the ability to understand what things really mean and to think analytically and creatively, he wrote.

The pope’s message was released on Saturday, January 24, the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron saint of journalists. The Vatican and most dioceses will celebrate the World Day of Communications on May 17, the Sunday before Pentecost.

The theme for the Church’s 60th celebration of World Day of Communications is “Preserving human voices and faces,” which the Dicastery for Communication announced last September.

The theme underlines the pope’s focus on the need to respect the human person and each person’s God-given uniqueness and diversity.

The challenge, he wrote, “is not technological, but anthropological. Protecting faces and voices ultimately means protecting ourselves.”

The main concern is not what “machines” or technology can or will be able to do, Pope Leo wrote, “but what we can and will be able to do, growing in humanity and knowledge, with the wise use of such powerful tools at our service.”

Pope Leo XIV talks to pilgrims and visitors during his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Jan. 21, 2026. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

The heart of the problem, he wrote, is the human temptation to passively accept the fruits of knowledge without being an integral part of the technological process, without doing the needed research, and without being held accountable and responsible regarding their use.

“Giving up the creative process and surrendering our mental capacities and imagination to machines means burying the talents we have received to grow as people in relation to God and others,” he wrote. “It means hiding our face and silencing our voice.”

If people replace real human relationships with AI-trained systems, where “everything is made in our image and likeness,” he wrote, people can build a “world of mirrors” and be robbed of the opportunity “to encounter others, who are always different from us, and with whom we can and must learn to engage.”

And finally, he warned about the danger of having a “handful of companies” be in control of so much data and be able to “subtly influence behavior and even rewrite human history – including the history of the Church – often without us even realizing it.”

What needs to be done, he wrote, is “not stop digital innovation but to guide it, to be aware of its ambivalent nature,” and to “raise our voices in defense of human beings, so that these tools can truly be integrated as our allies.”