Pope Leo XIV during his visit to Metz, France, 28 September 2026 Credit: Hugorenie / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons (cropped) AI safety warnings are not “fake news”, Pope Leo XIV said on Monday. He told reporters the world should heed the concerns of AI experts. He spoke on his flight back to Rome after a four-day trip to France. He said he was not in “panic mode”, and that he sleeps at night. “I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI, should be taken seriously.
I don’t think that that is fake news, as some have said, to try and cause whether financial or some other kind of benefit,” Leo said. Last week, Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that fears of AI were a “hoax”, Joshua McElwee reported for Reuters. Trump has also attacked AI safety warnings in a string of Truth Social posts. A White House official told Axios what Trump meant by the hoax.
Democrats, the official said, are using AI concerns to score points before the midterms. ‘The same one’ Leo said he had read on Monday about a Nvidia announcement on AI guardrails. Nvidia launched a safety platform for agents that day. The pope questioned Jensen Huang’s record. “He’s the same one, however, that says there should be no limits placed and no government regulation,” Leo said. Huang told CBS News this month that he agreed with Trump on AI safety, Reuters reported.
In Huang’s view, the fears go too far. ‘What could be down the road’ Leo said the Church wants to keep promoting dialogue, study and investigation on AI. “We need to continue to invite political leaders, the leaders of AI, social organisations, associations to come together and look at what is happening already and what could be down the road,” he said. The aim is to stop AI from reaching a point where it could destroy humanity, he said. Nor should it remove humanity from the conversation. Leo is the first American pope.
He has led the Catholic Church for 16 months. AI has been a central theme of his papacy. His first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, came out in May. In it, he warned that AI could erode human judgment and deepen inequality.
He also said it could destabilise democracy. Last Thursday he spoke at UNESCO in Paris about AI and human dignity. Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson meet tech chief executives at the White House on Tuesday. Reuters reports that Huang will be there.
Its sources say Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei will also attend. Johnson has said the talks will seek a balance between innovation and oversight.
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