Pope Leo XIV calls for ban on lethal autonomous weapons and warns against delegating decisions to AI

A call to disarm AI

Pope Leo XIV said on Friday, 30 October 2026, that artificial intelligence must be disarmed and that some decisions must never be handed over to machines. He spoke to a gathering of AI researchers and experts held in the Vatican and co-sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Life and the Future of Life Institute. The meeting also gave the Vatican's in-house AI commission a chance to engage with specialists in the field. The pope pressed the states that will meet in Geneva in November to take concrete steps toward banning lethal autonomous weapons. He opened his argument with a plain warning.

“Some decisions must never be delegated.”

Human oversight of life and force

The pope's central demand was that decisions affecting human life, freedom and the use of force stay under human control. He named two cases where he saw the danger: a person placed on a target list, and a person entered into a database for border control. In both, he said, the individual risks being reduced to a mere data point. He stated the principle in one sentence, which Italian and Romanian reports of the speech also carry.

“Decisions affecting human life, freedom, and the use of force must always remain subject to effective, informed, and responsible human oversight.”

Machines are tools, not persons

The pope said machines are tools and not persons, and he cautioned against proposals to grant AI systems rights or legal personhood. Such an approach, he argued, could blur human responsibility and leave those harmed facing an impersonal entity. Italian coverage quoted him saying that these systems have no experiences, no body, and no capacity to feel joy or pain. He also said the future of AI is not predetermined and depends on the choices people make. In Romanian coverage of the address, he framed the central question as what purpose AI should serve, not only what it can do. People, he said, have the responsibility to guide and change AI applications and to reject those considered dangerous.

Institutions and the common good

The pope called the institutional ethical framework the most urgent challenge facing the AI field. He said the guiding principles are already known, but the institutions able to safeguard the global common good are not yet in place. He called for shared standards, independent oversight and clear accountability, so that AI decisions can be examined, challenged when necessary, and remedied for any harm caused. His 2026 encyclical, Magnificent Humanity, had already called for robust regulation of AI and for developers to pursue the common good rather than profit. On Friday he highlighted many of that document's key points, including the view that the future of AI is not predetermined.

Background and what comes next

Pope Francis made a similar call in 2024, saying:

“No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.”

Pope Leo XIV's appeal is addressed to the states that will gather in Geneva in November, the month he named for that meeting. The timeline below places his remarks alongside the earlier papal call and the Geneva meeting.

The articles do not describe any commitments the states have made ahead of that meeting.