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The Vatican is currently facing a significant challenge as AI-generated deepfakes of Pope Leo XIV continue to proliferate across social media platforms. These synthetic videos and images depict the pontiff speaking on various topics he has never addressed, creating confusion among the public and forcing the Church to engage in a constant cycle of reporting and fact-checking.

What happened

The Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication reports a surge in YouTube channels utilizing artificial intelligence to mimic the voice and likeness of Pope Leo XIV. These deepfakes vary in complexity, with some videos featuring the Pope’s voice, others using his translators, and some narrating in the third person. The content ranges from plausible reflections on the Eucharist to alarming fabrications, such as a 25-minute video that falsely claimed the Pope had broken his silence on the murder of Charlie Kirk, which garnered over 445,000 views in one week.

One notable early incident occurred shortly after the Pope's election in May, when a 36-minute video surfaced showing him denouncing colonialism and praising Burkina Faso’s military leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. That video reached at least one million views before the associated account was terminated by YouTube. In another instance, AI-generated photographs circulated in June depicting the Pope falling down a flight of stairs outside St. Peter’s Basilica, causing genuine concern among his acquaintances. While the Vatican’s communications team continues to report hundreds of accounts to platforms like YouTube, they describe the situation as an uphill battle, as new deepfake content appears as quickly as previous instances are removed. Both the Vatican News outlet and the Dicastery for Communication have been forced to issue repeated warnings to the public to curb the spread of this misinformation.