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Francis, the pope of the age of social media and AI
2025-04-22 08:13:22 / BOTA
An internet star, sometimes despite himself, Pope Francis, who died yesterday, knew how to exploit social networks for his communication, while regularly warning against the dangers of disinformation and the possible excesses of artificial intelligence (AI).
Created in 2012 by his predecessor Benedict XVI, just months before his election to the pontificate, the X (former Twitter) account @pontifex helped modernize the head of the Catholic Church's communications, particularly targeting young people.
Francis immediately had great success in this network.
With a total of 50 million followers, the account is available in nine languages: English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Polish, German, Arabic and even Latin, which has had tremendous success, with one million subscribers.
In March 2016, three years into his pontificate, the Argentine pope went further by creating the Instagram account Franciscus, which attracted almost 10 million followers.
As in X, the Vatican posts there every day photos and videos, mainly of a religious nature, taken from the speeches, texts and public interventions of the spiritual leader of more than 1.4 billion Catholics in the world.
His latest Instagram video, a snippet from his Easter Sunday Mass speech, has been liked by nearly 400,000 people.
This popularity did not prevent him from regularly denouncing the negative effects of social networks.
"While they serve to connect us more closely, they can also reinforce our isolation," he said in a 2019 message published on the occasion of World Communications Day.
"They are also subject to manipulation of personal data," he adds.
Last January, when X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, was suspected of spreading false information and manipulating public debate in Europe, he denounced "disinformation and polarization, where a few centers of power control an unprecedented amount of data and information."
A few days ago, he had denounced an era of "fake news" and warned against the excesses of artificial intelligence (AI) when it is used for "manipulation of consciousness."
He himself has been the subject of AI-generated images that have gone viral online, depicting him in a nightclub or getting married.
In March 2023, images of Pope Francis wearing a luxurious white Balenciaga jacket with a cross around his neck, in a style reminiscent of American rappers, went viral in just a few hours.
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