VATICAN CITY - An approximately 36-minute English-language speech, created by artificial intelligence, has been posted on YouTube, falsely attributing to Leo XIV words addressed to Ibrahim Traoré.
Vatican News
"To His Excellency President Ibrahim Traoré, President of the sovereign State of Burkina Faso, son of an African country, defender of his people, may grace and peace abound through wisdom, courage and truth...". So begins a fake message in English attributed to the Pope and created with the help of artificial intelligence. It is a speech in English of about 36 minutes, uploaded to YouTube from the account "Pan African dreams" and created using footage from Leo XIV's audience with journalists held at the Vatican on Monday, May 12. A technique called "morphing" was used, which uses artificial intelligence to transform the image by matching the movement of the lips to the fake words.
The fake video is titled "Pope Leo XIV Responds to Captain Ibrahim Traoré - A Message of Truth, Justice and Reconciliation". Viewers are led to believe that the new Pope made an entire public speech to the President of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré, in response to his letter, and in the video the following words are put into Leo's mouth:
"I have read your words not once, but many times, and each reading has been more profound than the last, because in your voice I have heard not only the anger of the President, but the righteous cry of a continent long wounded by the double blow of abandonment and exploitation." The video is part of a series of fake news stories also reported by BBC News on 15 May, and has also been reposted in a slightly shortened version and lower image quality on the YouTube account "Nou se Legliz".
It is noticeable that the image of the Pope is repeated and the Lion turns the same two leaves throughout the video. Given the proliferation of texts attributed to the new Pope without attribution on various social networks, it should be noted that all of Leo XIV's speeches, appearances and texts are available in full on the Vatican.va website.
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