General Discussion

Vatican City, Sep 25, 2025 / 09:57 am

Did you hear what Pope Leo XIV said about Charlie Kirk or President Donald Trump? What about his thoughts on the Rapture or whether it’s OK to be cremated?

These are just a few of the topics the pontiff has appeared to speak about at length in videos popping up every day on social media. The problem is the videos are not real, and the Vatican is struggling to fight their spread.

The Vatican’s communications team said it has reported hundreds of accounts, mostly on YouTube, posting fake, AI-created videos — called deepfakes — of Pope Leo since the start of his pontificate. But it’s an uphill battle with new accounts, videos, and images appearing as quickly as others are removed.

“We are witnessing the exponential proliferation of a series of YouTube channels with fake videos, all similar to one another, some speaking in the voice of Leo XIV, others in that of his translators, still others in the third person. All use artificial intelligence to make the pope say things he never said,” the Dicastery for Communication said in a statement to CNA.

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