UPDATE: Since this article was published, YouTube has terminated one of the channels.
Pope Leo XIV has been pope for only two weeks, yet has already been the subject of numerous artificial intelligence-generated hoax videos.
One, a 36-minute-long video purportedly addressed to the president of the African country Burkina Faso, was even condemned by Vatican News, the Holy See's news service.
That video, titled, "Pope Leo XIV responds to Captain Ibrahim Traoré – A Message of Truth, Justice & Reconciliation," was posted on the YouTube account "Pan African Dreams," said Vatican News. It was created using footage from Pope Leo XIV's audience with journalists on May 12.
A "morphing" technique was used to ensure the pope's mouth matched the text in the audio, said Vatican News.
In the video, Pope Leo XIV "refers" to the president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, as "son of African soil, defender of his people," and "wishes" for "grace and peace multiply for you through wisdom, courage and truth."
Pope Leo then "praised" the president, "saying," "I have read your words not once, but many times, and each reading has been deeper than the last, because in your voice I have heard not only the anger of a president, but the righteous cry of a continent long wounded by the twin blades of abandonment and exploitation.”
Burkina Faso has been in a civil war for about a decade. Traoré, the president, seized control of the country in 2022 through a coup d'état.
Fake news
Pope Leo XIV has never praised the president of Burkina Faso, noted Vatican News.
It is worth recalling—given the circulation on various social media of texts attributed to the new Pope without source indication—that all of Pope Leo XIV’s speeches, addresses, and texts can be consulted in full at vatican.va.
News of his activities and video messages are available in real time on the Vatican News portal at vaticannews.va, in multiple languages, as well as on the Vatican’s newspaper website L’Osservatore Romano at osservatoreromano.va.
Pope Leo XIV's sermons? Not quite
On YouTube, a page titled "Pope Leo XIV's Sermons," has almost 18,000 subscribers and nearly one million views on its 25 videos.
All of them are AI-generated, and Pope Leo XIV has not actually said anything attributed to him, or read in "his" voice in the videos.
The first video uploaded on the channel, titled, "Pope Leo XIV First Message To All Catholics || Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost Speech" contains an entirely AI-generated sermon attributed to Pope Leo XIV, in his voice.
The most-viewed video is titled "POPES WAKEUP URGENT CALL TO ALL TRUE CHRISTIANS || POPE LEO XIV SPEECH." It was uploaded on May 13 and has received nearly 330,000 views. It, too, is something the pope has never said, read in his voice.
While all of the videos on the channel contain the disclaimer that "Sound or visuals were significantly edited or digitally generated," comments on the video suggest it is not immediately obvious that the sermon itself was never given by Pope Leo XIV.
"Wow! Our Holy Father speaks the powerful and challenging truth! God bless him! Thank you. Lord, for Pope Leo XIV!" reads one comment.
"Thank you for a sermon that needs to be heard by all if we want to be a true follower of our Lord. I have not heard a sermon like this for a very long time. God bless our Pope. Amen," says another.
Irony
One of the first things Pope Leo XIV actually said as pope regarded his concerns surrounding artificial intelligence. In a speech to his brother cardinals, Leo XIV explained his choice of name:
"There are different reasons for [choosing to take the name Leo], but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.
In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labour.
Aleteia reached out to YouTube for comment about the "Pope Leo XIV sermons" channel.
Pope Francis had already made artificial intelligence the subject of various addresses and messages, and the Vatican has been considering both the promises and the threats posed by the technology.
See, for example, Pope Francis' World Day of Peace message for 2024.
Find news and reflections on AI ethics here.
