A top Vatican official warned of the dangers of artificial intelligence at a conference ahead of today’s release of Pope Leo’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. Source: EWTN News.
Cardinal Jose Tolentino de Mendonça, prefect of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, on Thursday criticised AI deepfakes as a threat to human encounter.
“When a deepfake lends a personʼs face to words they have never spoken … it is the very grammar of the human encounter that is altered,” Cardinal Mendonça told a conference on AI in Rome on Thursday.
“Technology that exploits our need for relationship … can not only have painful consequences on the destiny of individuals, but it can also damage the social, cultural and political fabric of societies.”
Coming a few days before the release of Pope Leo XIVʼs Magnifica Humanitas, which will address moral and social questions related to AI, the conference theme was “Preserving Human Voices and Faces”.
Organised by the Dicastery for Communication and held at the Pontifical Urban University, the conference brought together professors, journalists, and engineers who offered insights into the risks AI poses to authentic human experiences.
Cardinal Mendonça, citing the Popeʼs message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, clarified that the goal “lies not in stopping digital innovation but in guiding it”.
Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, added: “The greatest danger consists in passively accepting the idea that knowledge no longer belongs to us.”
Some of the conference panellists expressed their hopes for Pope Leoʼs encyclical on AI.
One of those was Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Section of Culture of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
“I think the Pope is doing two things: First, he will be offering perspectives that enable people to reflect and think critically about AI and its role in society. Second, he is initiating a dialogue,” Bishop Tighe told EWTN News.
“He wants to create an environment where all the various people who have a part in the development of AI are attentive to keeping the human at the centre.”
FULL STORY
Vatican warns that AI ‘deepfakes’ threaten the human experience (By Ishmael Adibuah, EWTN News)
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