Pope Leo refuses to have a digital avatar created for him and warns: "It will be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI."

Pope Leo XIV reveals in his first interview as Pontiff , given to journalist Elise Ann Allen of 'Crux', that he recently refused a proposal to be recreated using Artificial Intelligence (AI) because he believes the Pope should not be represented by "an avatar."

"Someone recently asked me for permission to create an artificial version of me, so that anyone could go to a website and have a personal audience with 'the pope' , and this artificially intelligent pope would answer their questions. I said, 'I'm not going to authorize that.' If there's anyone who shouldn't be represented by an avatar, it seems to me, it's the pope," he emphasizes in the interview, conducted on July 10, 2025, and published in Peru this Thursday, September 18, in the book 'Leo XIV. Citizen of the World, Missionary of the 21st Century' (Penguin Random House). In Spain, it will be published on October 23.

Thus, although the Pontiff assures that he is not against technological advances, he believes that "it will be very difficult to discover the presence of God in AI ."

Furthermore, he finds the "incredible" pace at which artificial intelligence is advancing "worrying" and argues that the Church must "raise its voice" in the face of the danger of losing "sight of the value of humanity," something that can be seen, in his opinion, in "extremely rich people who are investing in artificial intelligence , completely ignoring the value of human beings and humanity."

"I insist that I am not at all against artificial intelligence. In the world of medicine, great things have happened thanks to AI, and in other fields as well. However, there is a danger in this, because you end up creating a false world and then you ask yourself: what is truth? " the Pope states in the book, reviewed by Europa Press.

In this sense, he warns of the "great challenge" posed by "fake news" because "the temptation is for people to believe it, and they believe it because some people seem to have a need to receive it." "Why are all these people consuming this fake news? Something is going on there. People want to believe in conspiracies , people want to seek out all these false things, and that is very destructive," he adds.