Pope Leo warns men to stop talking with AI chatbot girlfriends or face 'painful consequences'

(Web Desk) – The Pope has warned men not to fall for ‘excessively affectionate’ AI chatbot girlfriends or face ‘painful consequences’.

Pope Leo XIV said it’s become “increasingly difficult to determine whether we are interacting with other human beings or with bots” in today’s digital world. The pontiff issued a plea to Catholics on the World Day of Social Communications about the urgent importance of “preserving human voices and faces”.

And if people continue to turn to AI and fail to embrace others “there can be no relationships or friendships”.

“Faces and voices are sacred,” the Pope told believers.

“Digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilisation that at times are taken for granted.”

Pope Leo warned that while such AI chatbots may be “entertaining” they are also “deceptive”, as he shared particular concern for the most vulnerable.

“Because chatbots are excessively ‘affectionate,’ as well as always present and accessible, they can become hidden architects of our emotional states and so invade and occupy our sphere of intimacy,” the Pope continued.

“Technology that exploits our need for relationships can lead not only to painful consequences in the lives of individuals, but also to damage in the social, cultural and political fabric of society.

“This occurs when we substitute relationships with others for AI systems that catalog our thoughts, creating a world of mirrors around us, where everything is made ‘in our image and likeness’.” “These algorithms reduce our ability to listen and think critically, and increase social polarisation.”

He cautioned that the problem is further exacerbated by “a naive and unquestioning reliance on artificial intelligence as an omniscient ‘friend,’ a source of all knowledge, an archive of every memory, an ‘oracle’ of all advice”.

However, Pope Leo said that we shouldn’t stop digital innovation but instead “guide it and to be aware of its ambivalent nature”.

It’s not the first time Catholics have been warned about the dangers of AI.

Pope Leo’s predecessor, the late Pope Francis, said in 2024 that simulation technology becomes “perverse when it distorts our relationship with others and with reality”.

He pushed for more regulation of AI technology to prevent “harmful, discriminatory, and socially unjust effects.”