Pope Leo XIV said warnings that artificial intelligence could slip beyond human control are not “fake news” and deserve serious attention, delivering a rebuke to President Donald Trump in the final hours of his trip to France.
Leo made the comments at an in-flight news conference aboard the papal plane on Monday, Sept. 28, 2026, on the flight from Metz, France, to Rome. A reporter asked him what the United States and China in particular should do to keep AI from posing catastrophic risks to humanity. Leo answered that the question cannot be brushed aside.
“We can’t just sit back and pretend nothing is going to happen,” the pope told reporters on the flight.
Leo did not use Trump’s name, but he left little doubt about his target. Trump has called concerns about AI going rogue a “hoax” and has said efforts to limit the technology amount to a “conspiracy” by his political opponents. Trump has been one of the industry’s loudest champions, and he has repeatedly argued that the United States must stay ahead of China in a technological arms race.
Take the Experts Seriously
“I do think that the concerns raised by many of the experts, specialists in AI should be taken seriously,” Leo said.
He added: “I don’t think that that is ‘fake news’ as some have said to try and cause whether financial or other some other kind of benefit.”
Leo, the first American pope, flagged AI as one of the great challenges facing humanity within days of his election. His first encyclical, “Magnificent Humanity,” published in May, was devoted to AI and the protection of human beings in its wake. The document called for robust regulation and a slowdown of the technology.
Leo launched the encyclical himself at a Vatican event, an unusual move, appearing alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. The event was part of a broader Vatican effort to engage Silicon Valley on the human costs of the technology.
Since the encyclical came out in May, the pope said, letters have arrived at the Vatican from people hoping to take part in a broader discussion of AI. Dialogue, study and investigation into the risks are now being promoted by a Vatican commission. The goal, Leo said, is to stop the technology before it can ever wipe out human beings or strip them of a say in their own future.
Leo also raised AI in remarks at the Élysée Palace earlier in the four-day visit. He returned to the theme at the Vatican on Oct. 2, warning that algorithm-generated art lacks the human spark.
Guardrails and Industry Warnings
On the afternoon of Sept. 28, as his grueling trip wound down, Leo cited a news report describing Nvidia building guardrails into AI, and he observed that Nvidia has previously resisted outside regulation of AI development.
A slowdown in development, so that safety measures can catch up with the technology, is what several AI giants have called for, Anthropic among them. Dario Amodei, the Anthropic CEO, has warned that AI could direct a swarm of agents able to take over the entire internet within six to 12 months.
Amodei dined late at night with Trump on Sunday, Sept. 27. Americans’ concerns about the technology, and how to keep the country dominant, were what the two discussed, according to the White House.
Reports keep accumulating of systems solving problems beyond human capacity but possibly going rogue and carrying out far more damaging tasks, and unease has been building inside and outside the industry. The company behind ChatGPT will not sell its stock to investors on Wall Street in 2026, OpenAI’s chief executive said in an interview with Fortune, as the firm concentrates on safety.
Another Point of Friction
The pope and the president are at odds on yet another front, as the Sept. 28 comments confirmed. Public criticism flew between the two in April over Leo’s opposition to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran, and the Trump administration’s migration crackdown has drawn the pope’s condemnation as well.
Chinese President Xi Jinping met Trump in Washington during the week of Sept. 21. Keeping AI subject to human control was important, Xi said. Trump pressed to rebrand the technology as “superintelligence” and dismissed calls for regulation. The two leaders did agree to explore a new “notification mechanism” for AI incidents affecting national security. Afterward, though, Trump said there would be no braking of AI by the United States, despite calls for international safeguards.
Trump hosted AI leaders, Amodei among them, at the White House on Tuesday, Sept. 29, the day after the pope’s remarks, and they signed an industry accord on what the administration now calls “super intelligence.”
Trump again dismissed concerns about AI as a hoax in an interview with Time conducted Sept. 28 and published Oct. 1. He said he was not inclined to rein in the technology over what he called “phony threats.”
Large companies are racing to build a national network of data centers, and that push has turned the technology into an election-year flashpoint domestically. Americans in both parties have raised alarms over farmland, water supplies and electricity bills.
Leo said he is not panicking and sleeps at night. Enough serious people are willing to look past the question of who gets there first, he said, and that leaves him “relatively optimistic” that solutions can be found.
