Vatican communications team says it has blocked hundreds of accounts posting AI-generated deepfakes since the start of Pope Leo XIV's pontificate

Some of the videos gather hundreds of thousands of views. Recently, for example, a fake 25-minute video of Pope Leo XIV commenting on the murder of Charlie Kirk racked up 445,000 views in a week.

The first viral deepfake of Pope Leo XIV was an address condemning colonialism and praising the leader of a coup in Burkina Faso. It gathered around a million views before the video was taken down.

Leo XIV himself has related how an acquaintance anxiously asked after his health following the appearance of a deepfake in which he supposedly collapses outside St Peter's Basilica.

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free. So, here is the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

Vatican communications team says it has blocked hundreds of accounts posting AI-generated deepfakes since the start of Pope Leo XIV's pontificate

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At the close of the Strugatskys' "Roadside Picnic" the Golden Sphere is asked for this: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to leave no one aggrieved, but the digest really does come free

Frederic Leighton

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Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s