(ZENIT News / Rome, 27.05.2025).- Since Tuesday, May 27, the Holy See has had a new look for its institutional portal, Vatican.va. «We are revamping the graphic design of our website to offer you an even better browsing experience. Some sections may still be undergoing updates. We appreciate your patience while we complete the work,» reads a note on the Website’s home page.
The new institutional portal of the Holy See and the Pope appear in a context that poses a challenging issue: the proliferation of videos with speeches supposedly given by Leo XIV but that have actually been generated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) thanks to the cloning of the Pope’s voice.
On May 21, Vatican media warned about videos that combine images of the Pope with a voice almost identical to his own, making speeches he has never made. This is the so-called «morphing» technique: a technique that matches the lip movements in the video image with the spoken words. It’s a technique easily achieved thanks to AI.
This new way of publishing contents with words attributed to the Pope (formerly Francis, now Leo) is not new: images of the Pope accompanied by fabricated texts attributed to him still proliferate on social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp. In face of all this, what should we do? The Vatican media has issued advice: «It is worth remembering — given the circulation on various social media of texts attributed to the new Pope without indicating the source — that all of Pope Leo XIV’s speeches, addresses, and texts can be consulted in their entirety at vatican.va.» We would add: and ZENIT Agency and other reliable sources such as EWTN.
Returning to the topic of the institutional Website, the new Vatican Website moves from the traditional gold brown background to a home page with a blue and white background featuring the image of Pope Leo XIV. A video area and a photography area have been added to the home page. Toward the end of the home page, it transitions to brown, but now in softer tones than the version that existed until Monday, May 26. Perhaps this was not only a necessary renovation but also a response to the fakes attributed to the Pope in the age of AI.
Thank you for reading our content. If you would like to receive ZENIT’s daily e-mail news, you can subscribe for free through this link.
