It’s possible that AI was used to write parts of Pope Leo XIV’s latest encyclical regarding the impact of AI on humanity. An analysis posted on the LessRong forum by Lynch Zhang found a few paragraphs Magnifica Humanitas According to the popular AI detector Pangram, between 40 percent and 100 percent should be written by AI.
The document includes known traits that appear in AI-generated writing, such as greater use of the word “actually” — which comes up in the writing by Anthropic’s cloud — compared to previous encyclopedias, Zhang says. Another ran the document’s text section by section through Pangram, and found that 62 percent of its first chapter was marked as AI generated. When? The Verge Ran approximately 2,000 words of the document through Pangram, estimating that 46 percent was AI-written.
AI detection is not foolproof
Still, other parts are registered as being written by humans. Zhang noted that Pangram has marked some sections as “essentially 0% AI.” The first 20 paragraphs of the last four encyclopedias, when run through Pangram, had 100 percent confidence of being human written. And a transcript of Pope Leo’s speech, run through Pangram, was also rated as 100 percent human.
AI detection is not foolproof. Different AI detectors may produce different results, and even if there is a consensus, there is no guarantee that they are correct. But Pangram is generally respected among AI researchers. In March 2025, Pangram said it estimated that the false positive rate of reporting human-written works as AI-generated would be “about 1 in 10,000.”
Encyclicals are longer letters published by the Pope, intended to provide teachings that address important moral and social challenges of the time. the new York Times. It is the first papal encyclical, the most recent being written by Pope Francis in October 2024. It is also the first to focus on AI and its wider implications, with Pope Leo presenting it specifically to Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic.
The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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