Overview
- The Vatican published the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas on May 25, setting out a systematic Church position that says artificial intelligence must serve human dignity rather than replace people.
- The document calls for global regulation and new oversight bodies to prevent a small number of tech firms or states from concentrating power and creating what it terms the risk of 'technofascism.'
- Pope León XIV warns that automation can drive new poverty and exclusion and urges renewed labor protections, stronger unions, and legal limits on workplace surveillance.
- The encyclical advocates 'disarming' AI by restricting military uses and social‑control applications and links AI to environmental and geopolitical harms such as high data‑center energy use and technological dependency of poorer countries.
- Commentators say the text frames the issue as a civilizational choice that expands the Church’s public role and aims to shape policy debate, but it has not produced binding international rules or concrete regulation yet.