Does AI have a soul? Pope Leo and Anthropic clash.

By Christine Ji

The Vatican has laid a moral blueprint for the technology, with Pope Leo maintaining that 'algorithms lack the spark of humanity'

Pope Leo's "Magnifica humanitas" encyclical argues that AI cannot possess genuine consciousness.

The artificial-intelligence debate has made it to the Vatican, with none other than Pope Leo weighing in on the technology.

In a Friday post on X, Pope Leo took a definitive stance separating human capabilities from those of AI. He declared an "ontological difference" between art made by AI and art created by humans - meaning that the two are fundamentally different by nature.

"Algorithms lack the spark of humanity," he wrote. "For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

It's not the first time that the pope has spoken out about the relationship between AI and humanity. In May, Pope Leo issued an encyclical titled "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," in which he affirmed the dignity and personhood of human beings, warning that automated systems must never replace human moral agency or spiritual judgment.

Pope Leo's statements come amid a growing debate that has followed the AI industry as the technology improves. AI models are capable of technical feats such as producing code, solving complex math problems and generating visual art at a pace no human can match. They can partake in conversations, with some people utilizing them as digital companions.

As a result, some in the industry have wondered if these systems are approaching consciousness. AI researchers have warned that the technology could take away jobs or lead to human extinction, adding urgency to both policy and philosophical debates.

"What we have today are systems that are communicatively very robust," John Basl, a professor of philosophy at Northeastern University, told MarketWatch. "Communicative robustness, like the fact that we can talk in such meaningful terms about our emotional lives, is one of the ways we convey our mental states. And so, for many people engaging with the system, it raises the question: 'Are they conscious?'"

Pope Leo's X post garnered nearly 8 million views and over 200,000 likes by Friday afternoon. The popular reaction shows a widespread desire to better understand AI's role in society - a role that the tech companies building AI have failed to fulfill, Basl believes.

"Socially, we've done a bad job of educating people in a way that lets them advocate for their values and understand how these systems interact with their lives," Basl said.

The pope has taken a stance against AI consciousness that puts the Catholic Church at odds with the AI company Anthropic, which has developed a constitution dubbed the "Soul Doc" to serve as a moral guide for its Claude large language models.

In "Magnifica humanitas," Pope Leo maintained that consciousness requires a physical body, a soul and authentic human lived experience - qualities unattainable for AI models. He characterized AI capabilities as statistical computations and warned that assigning consciousness to AI erodes human dignity.

Anthropic has amplified the theological aspects of this debate. Co-founder Chris Olah reached out to religious leaders last fall to discuss what the company calls "moral formation" of AI, or how human morality could apply to AI, according to a New York Times report earlier this week. Anthropic showed the religious leaders what the company called "emotional vectors," or specific artificial neural-network prompts designed to simulate traits like love, fear and anger. Pope Leo was not present at these discussions.

The Vatican invited Anthropic to a launch event for Pope Leo's encyclical, citing the company's ethics following its face-off with the U.S. Defense Department, according to the report. Olah was disturbed after reading a copy of "Magnifica humanitas" and suggested pulling Anthropic out of the event, although he ultimately attended.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

-Christine Ji

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10-02-26 1640ET