Pope Leo warns about AI and calls for regulation as he quotes from the Lord of the Rings

Pope Leo has called for robust regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) in a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind.

In his first major document, the pontiff urged governments to slow down and closely regulate the development of AI systems, warning that they spread misinformation, prioritise conflict and risk leading the world down a path of unending war.

The text, titled Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), has been eagerly awaited since Leo said days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.

Leo said it was "not permissible" to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the US-born pope and the Trump administration, which has worked to deregulate AI development.

He warned during a Vatican event presenting the text that some autonomous weapons systems have advanced "practically beyond any human reach to govern them".

"Artificial Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death," he added.

The pope invoked J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings character Gandalf as he urged people to do their part to build a "civilization of love" amid the threat of AI.

He quoted the wizard saying in The Return of the King: "It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till."

Leo wrote that the civilisation of love "will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization".

The 83-page document, known as an encyclical, is one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents a pope can issue.

Among the attendees at the presentation of the text was Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, one of the world's top AI companies. Anthropic, which produces the Claude AI tools, is currently locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over access to its AI technology.

The Vatican decided to involve Anthropic as part of its long effort to engage tech companies in dialogue over the human cost of AI.

In his text, Leo called for ownership of AI data not to be left solely in private hands, for policy-makers to protect the rights of workers and keep children safe from the technology, and urged the cooling of competition between AI companies.

"What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating," said Leo in the text

The pope called for "robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility."

Read more from Sky News:
Unknown substance sprayed on people in Tokyo
More than 30 die in Pakistan suicide bomb attack

"A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few," he added.

Mr Olah thanked the pope for addressing the problems raised by AI and said firms like his faced strong commercial pressures and needed outside scrutiny.

"Every frontier AI lab, including Anthropic, operates inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing," Mr Olah said.

(c) Sky News 2026: Pope Leo warns about AI and calls for regulation as he quotes from the Lord of the Rings