Pope Leo XIV told a Vatican meeting of scientists and AI experts that artificial intelligence systems are "tools, not persons," warning against granting AI agents legal rights and urging governments gathering in Geneva next month to ban lethal autonomous weapons.
The address was delivered to participants of "The Future of AI: A Dialogue Between the Vatican and the Scientific World on the Developments and Applications of Intelligent Technologies," a meeting organized jointly by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute. The Pope said participants from different countries share "a certain sense of unease regarding the development of artificial intelligence. We recognize the direction we should take, yet not enough is being done to move forward."
Machines are tools, not persons
The clearest line of the address targeted an idea gaining traction in parts of the tech industry and legal academy: extending legal personhood — or rights — to advanced AI systems. Pope Leo argued the opposite. Machines, he said, do not have experiences, bodies, feelings or relationships, and do not understand love, work or responsibility.
Some have suggested giving these systems rights or legal personhood, he acknowledged — but doing so risks "obscuring human responsibility and leaving those who suffer harm to confront a faceless entity." The comment lands in the same season that has seen AI agents autonomously run businesses, negotiate contracts and act on users' behalf, prompting genuine legal debates about liability when autonomous systems cause harm. AI Buzz Wire is tracking this and other AI policy developments as they happen. The Pope's framing puts the question back on the humans behind the system: if an AI agent causes damage, someone with a face must answer for it.
"Disarming" AI: the autonomous weapons ban
The Pope's third consideration — that certain decisions must never be delegated to machines — was illustrated with stark examples: putting a person on a target list or in a border control database reduces them to "a data point." He invoked his predecessor Pope Francis's 2024 address to G7 leaders, where Francis described AI as "an exciting and fearsome tool" and insisted no machine should ever be able to choose to take a human life.
"Decisions affecting human life, freedom and the use of force must always remain subject to effective, informed, and responsible human oversight," Pope Leo said. That is why AI must be "disarmed," he argued — and he explicitly encouraged the states meeting in Geneva in November to take steps to ban lethal autonomous weapons. Diplomats have struggled for years to agree binding rules on autonomous weapons; a direct papal appeal adds moral weight to a negotiating process that has been driven mostly by civil-society campaigns and a bloc of concerned states.
Five considerations from Magnifica Humanitas
The address organized itself around five considerations the Pope laid out in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas:
1. The future of AI is not pre-determined. Since human beings develop AI, its future depends on humanity's choices. "We have the responsibility to guide, change, and, when necessary, reject its applications," the Pope said. The right question is not "What can AI do?" but "What purpose should it serve?"
2. Machines are tools, not people. The personhood warning above.
3. Certain decisions can never be delegated. Decisions affecting human life, freedom and the use of force require effective, informed, responsible human oversight.
4. Intelligent technologies must serve the common good. They "must never become ends in themselves or serve merely the interests of a privileged few," and should spread the benefits of progress equitably.
5. Institutions are needed to make ethics operational. Described as potentially the most urgent challenge: the world needs "shared standards, independent oversight, and clear mechanisms of accountability, so that decisions concerning the development and use of AI can be examined, challenged when necessary, and accompanied by appropriate remedies for any harm caused."
Why it matters beyond the Vatican
The Vatican has quietly become one of the more consistent institutional voices on AI governance. The Rome Call for AI Ethics, signed in February 2020 by the Pontifical Academy for Life alongside Microsoft, IBM, the FAO and the Italian government, grew out of this ecosystem, and the Pontifical Academy for Life has repeatedly convened technologists on bioethics and machine decision-making. Co-organizing with the Future of Life Institute — the AI safety organization behind open letters on frontier-model risk — signals a continued effort to bridge religious and secular AI ethics communities.
For policymakers, the Geneva appeal is the concrete takeaway: as negotiations over autonomous weapons resume, the Vatican wants a binding ban, not voluntary guidelines. And for the AI industry, the message on personhood is a clear line in the sand — however autonomous agents become, moral and legal responsibility stays with the people who build and deploy them.
