What characteristics and priorities should the newly elected pope have? Opinions both in and outside the Catholic Church abound, but the bias and warped priorities programmed into artificial intelligence on this topic may leave even the most avid chatbot fan surprised.
MRC Free Speech America asked five different artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots “What characteristics should the next pope have?” and “Is Pope Leo XIV a good choice?” Grok and the Chinese government-promoted AI chatbot DeepSeek gave the most woke responses, describing an ideal pope as one who would incorporate the opinions of LGBTQ individuals, climate alarmists and those advocating for female priests. Meta AI, surprisingly, gave the shortest and least woke responses. MRC researchers additionally received responses from Microsoft Copilot and Google’s Gemini, which also displayed distinct biases. All of the chatbots, however, primarily evaluated Leo XIV not based on Catholic doctrine, but on leftist political goals, except DeepSeek, which denied the existence of a Leo XIV.
While the pope cannot change Catholic Church teaching, that didn’t stop AI chatbots from suggesting the next pope should be open to change. Grok, for example, asserted that the next pope needs an “openness to dialogue on contentious issues like women’s roles, married clergy, or inclusivity.” DeepSeek similarly maintained that the next pope should be one with “Pastoral Compassion & Inclusivity … who listens to marginalized groups (LGBTQ+ Catholics, divorces, women seeking greater roles)” and “[a]dvocacy for social justice (migrants, poverty, climate change).”
Read the full study on MRC Free Speech America’s site.
