It’s attainable that AI was used to put in writing elements of Pope Leo XIV’s newest encyclical about AI’s impression on humanity. An analysis by Linch Zhang posted on the discussion board LessWrong discovered sure paragraphs of Magnificent Humanity to be between 40 p.c and one hundred pc written by AI, based on the favored AI detector Pangram.
The doc consists of identified traits that seem in AI-generated writing, resembling a better use of the phrase “genuinely” — which crops up in writing by Anthropic’s Claude — than earlier encyclicals, Zhang says. One other particular person ran the textual content of the doc part by part via Pangramdiscovering that 62 p.c of its first chapter was flagged as AI generated. When The Verge ran roughly 2,000 phrases of the doc by way of Pangram, it estimated that 46 p.c was AI-written.
AI detection isn’t foolproof
Nonetheless, different parts register as being written by people. Zhang notes that Pangram flagged some sections as “basically 0% AI.” The primary 20 paragraphs of the final 4 encyclicals, when run by way of Pangram, had a one hundred pc confidence of being human written. And a transcript of Pope Leo’s speech, run by way of Pangram, was additionally rated as one hundred pc human.
AI detection isn’t foolproof. Completely different AI detectors can show completely different outcomes, and even when there’s consensus there’s no assure they’re right. However Pangram is usually revered amongst AI researchers. In March 2025Pangram stated it estimated its false constructive fee of reporting human-written work as AI-generated “to be roughly 1 in 10,000.”
Encyclicals are prolonged letters revealed by the pope, meant to impart teachings that tackle essential ethical and social challenges of the time, based on The New York Times. This encyclical is the pope’s first, with the latest one written by Pope Francis in October 2024. It’s additionally the primary to deal with AI and its wide-ranging influences, with Pope Leo notably presenting it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic.
The Vatican didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
