Pope Francis warns about AI, fake news and ‘manipulating minds’

Pope Francis warned on Thursday of the dangers of misinformation and its spread via social media and artificial intelligence (AI), cautioning it could be “misused to manipulate minds”.

In his traditional New Year’s address to diplomats at the Vatican, Francis lamented the increasing polarisation of society, “aggravated by the continuous creation and spread of fake news, which not only distorts facts but also perceptions”.

“This phenomenon generates false images of reality, a climate of suspicion that foments hate, undermines people’s sense of security and compromises civil coexistence and the stability of entire nations,” the 88-year-old pontiff said.

Francis regularly rails against fake news.

But his comments on thursday come two days after tech giant Meta — which owns Facebook — announced it was ending its third-party fact-checking programme in the United States and adopting a crowd-sourced model to police misinformation similar to that of the Elon Musk-owned X.

In remarks directed at political leaders, the pope said: “In our time, the denial of self-evident truths seems to have gained the upper hand.”

“These tendencies can be amplified by the modern communications media and by artificial intelligence; they can be misused to manipulate minds for economic, political and ideological ends,” he added.

Francis, who has been head of the worldwide Catholic Church since 2013, emphasised the need for media literacy education to promote critical thinking.

He did not deliver the speech himself, saying he had a cold, but it was read out on his behalf by a senior cleric.

In the address, the pope also warned against “cancel culture”, which “tolerates no differences and focuses on individual rights to the detriments of duties towards others, especially the weakest”.

He cited as “particularly worrying” attempts to “manipulate multilateral documents — by changing the meaning of terms or unilaterally reinterpreting the content of human rights treaties — in order to advance divisive ideologies”.

“In this regard, it is unacceptable, for example, to speak of an alleged ‘right to abortion’ that contradicts human rights, particularly the right to life,” he said.

Francis also cautioned that multilateral institutions risked becoming “like-minded clubs that only let in those who think in the same way” — and as such, said they “no longer seem capable of ensuring peace and stability”.

AFP currently works in 26 languages with Facebook’s fact-checking programme.