Did the Pope use AI to write about the dangers of AI?
Analysts are investigating whether Pope Leo XIV used AI to write his latest encyclical, citing stylistic patterns and AI-detection software. The document reportedly contains linguistic markers common in AI-generated text, such as the frequent use of the word 'genuinely'.
Why it matters
This raises questions about the authenticity of religious and official documents in an era where AI tools are increasingly capable of mimicking human writing styles.
It's possible that AI was used to write parts of Pope Leo XIV's latest encyclical about AI's impact on humanity. An analysis by Linch Zhang posted on the forum LessWrong found certain paragraphs of Magnifica Humanitas to be between 40 percent and 100 percent written by AI, according to the popular AI detector Pangram. The document includes known traits that appear in AI-generated writing, such as a higher use of the word "genuinely" - which crops up in writing by Anthropic's Claude - than previous encyclicals, Zhang says. Another person ran the text of the document section by section through Pangram , finding that 62 percent of its first cha … Read the full story at The Verge.
The article reports on a technical analysis without taking a stance on the validity of the AI-detection tools or the Pope's intent.
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