The scandal surrounding the encyclical «Magnifica Humanitas» erupted immediately after its publication. The document, dedicated to protecting human dignity in the face of artificial intelligence, provoked a stormy reaction not only in religious circles but also within the tech community. The main question that arose among experts: did AI itself become a co-author of the text calling for protection from machines?
Certification via AI
The Vatican officially did not comment on the accusations but took concrete steps to refute them. According to The Guardian, the encyclical underwent official certification as a text written by a human. However, the first paradox lies in this process: the certification itself was conducted using AI tools.
At the center of the polemic was Pangram Labs, a company specializing in AI content detection. The company's experts analyzed the official publications of Pope Leo XIV's account on the social network X and concluded that some of them were likely generated by algorithms.
Text Analysis: Human or Machine?
A detailed breakdown of the full text of the encyclical revealed an ambiguous picture. According to Pangram Labs, the main document was written by a human, although individual paragraphs raised suspicions. AI researcher Lynch Zhang, conducting his own analysis, supported this version but added an important caveat: it likely refers to AI assisting Vatican staff in working on fragments, rather than the Pope's direct participation.
The version that someone from the Vatican staff secretly inserted machine-generated text sounds like a plot for a feature film. However, the church, it seems, rejected this hypothesis as well, turning to the company Proudly Human, which specializes in verifying texts as created without AI involvement.
The Paradox of Verification
The certification procedure conducted by Proudly Human appears substantial. The Church provided a selection of the Pope's speeches and texts as a control group, based on which the encyclical was checked for stylistic consistency. The process also included identity verification and signing a statement that AI was not used for either the initial draft or the writing of individual sentences.
The main paradox of the situation is that Proudly Human uses its own AI tools to analyze nuances of grammar and stylistic patterns, and the final conclusion is rendered based on an averaging algorithm. In other words, the question of whether a text was written by AI is solved using AI itself. The verdict on «Magnifica Humanitas» was unambiguous: the text was written by a human.
The Question of Trust
Ultimately, the entire dispute boils down to a question of trust. On one side stand the proponents of AI detectors, on the other—the Vatican with its official certification. At the same time, the head of the Catholic Church has one argument unavailable to either side of the conflict: the threat of eternal damnation in case of lying is a rather weighty incentive to speak the truth.