Pope Leo Issues Sweeping Encyclical Targeting Big Tech and the Risks of AI

So, the Pope just weighed in on AI — and he didn't hold back. On May 25th, Pope Leo XIV released his first major teaching document, called an encyclical (think of it as an official letter to the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, carrying some of the highest authority in the Church). The title? Magnifica Humanitas — Latin for "Magnificent Humanity." And the message is pretty direct: human beings must come before technology.

Pope Leo took direct aim at the power of Big Tech, warning that artificial intelligence risks widening inequality, weakening democracy, and undermining what it means to be human. He's framing this moment in history as a turning point — the document frames AI as the new industrial revolution and makes an appeal to "disarm AI" by removing it from military and economic interests, subjecting AI companies to stricter state and international regulations, and inviting the broad participation of individuals and communities in shaping the future of this rapidly developing technology.

Now, "disarming AI" sounds dramatic, but he's not calling for a ban on ChatGPT. What he means is closer to this: the pope called for making AI more "human-friendly" and freeing it from monopolistic control, shifting away from using it to achieve geopolitical or commercial gains.

Here's where it gets personal for everyday people. The pope warned against "new forms of slavery," highlighting the trail of human and environmental exploitation behind AI — from the models training on copyrighted material to the extraction of rare minerals used in AI hardware. In other words, every time you use an AI tool, there's a supply chain of hidden costs — human labor, mined materials, and your own data — that most of us never see.

He's also worried about what AI does to your inner life. In a time of AI chatbots, Leo wrote that the risk is not just that someone interacting with an AI agent might believe they are talking to a person, but that they might lose the desire to seek other people at all. And on a broader level, handing over decision-making to machines may "encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment."

The Pope says that the future of humanity cannot be left in the hands of a few wealthy tech leaders, and warns of new forms of exploitation — from hidden labor, to rare mineral mining, to data taken without genuine consent. He's also sounding alarms on AI in warfare. In the encyclical, Leo sounded the alarm over AI-directed weaponry, saying it was "not permissible to entrust lethal" decisions to tech.

To be fair, the pope does recognize the positive impact AI innovation can bring to human society and to the care of the environment — this isn't a blanket condemnation. But as he put it, "technology is never neutral" — it's an expression of the interests and stakeholders behind it.

One notable moment: Pope Leo presented the encyclical alongside AI experts, including Christopher Olah, co-founder of US giant Anthropic — one of the biggest AI companies in the world. That's not a small detail. It signals the Vatican is actively engaging with the tech industry, not just lecturing from the sidelines.