Pope Leo XIV’s writings on artificial intelligence have become the first work of a faith leader to be officially verified as man-made, via an Australian outfit working with authors and artists to certify their work as bot-free. Source: Daily Telegraph.
A “Proudly Human” stamp has been affixed to Maps of Hope, a collection of the Pope’s early speeches, homilies and writings on education and AI ethics, collated at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) with help from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education.
Proudly Human founder and former chief scientist Alan Finkel approached ACU Vice-Chancellor Zlatko Skrbis offering to authenticate the book as human-generated, making it the first religious text to earn the badge.
“What we have done with this certification, is acknowledge the complexity that has been opened up in terms of authenticating and separating out what is human, and what it not,” Professor Skrbis said.
“For me it was a way of testing and affirming the challenging environment that we operate in, and highlight the importance of human discernment.”
The book’s release coincided with the publication of Pope Leo’s first encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, a near 43,000-word thesis on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence”.
Dr Finkel said while the collection of papal commentary was treated with “the utmost respect,” it went through the same certification process that any other book does, starting with a formal application, an ID check on the authors, and a declaration that minimal use of AI standards have been met.
The text is then checked against AI detection software.
“No one thinks we should do this in any way frivolously; we see this as an acknowledgment of what we’d already expect,” Dr Finkel said.
“We had total confidence that they would pass with flying colours, and they did.”
His organisation offers a “trust mark” similar to the Australian Made or Fair Trade logo, labelling creative works including books, music, illustrations, films and even handcrafted items like jewellery as AI-free.
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Australian enterprise Proudly Human certifies Pope Leo XIV collection AI-free (By Eilidh Sproul-Mellis, Daily Telegraph)
