Overview
- Pope Leo XIV, who delivered the address on Friday, October 30, 2026, offered five considerations that he said should guide AI development and use.
- He said the decisive question is not what AI can do but what purpose societies choose for it, and he urged humans to guide, change or reject applications that harm dignity.
- The pope argued that machines are tools not persons and warned that granting legal personhood to AI would obscure human responsibility and leave victims without redress.
- He insisted that decisions affecting life, freedom or the use of force must remain under effective human oversight and encouraged states meeting in Geneva in November to take steps to ban lethal autonomous weapons.
- The speech, given at a Vatican meeting organized with the Future of Life Institute, called for shared standards, independent oversight and accountability institutions and builds on Pope Francis’s 2024 G7 warning and the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.