When Pope Leo XIV recently warned that algorithms used by artificial intelligence “lack the spark of humanity,” he highlighted a growing crisis within the church’s visual culture: the prevalence of A.I.-generated imagery in Catholic spaces. Parish bulletins, Catholic websites and even Jesuit Province Instagram accounts are full of imagery easily recognized as generated by ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. In the face of this trend, the pope insisted that there is an “ontological difference” between authentic human creation and statistical calculations. 

Yet what do reflections on ontology have to say to the parish secretary, social media intern or campus minister who has to decide quickly between spending hours learning how to make a flyer or just asking A.I. to do it? Why not just let the machine do the creative tasks for free?

The pope’s comments show us that A.I. is not actually free. A.I. imagery, or “slop” as it is often referred to online, carries moral, environmental and theological costs. And ultimately, the use of A.I. imagery undermines the church’s mission of evangelization. Thus, Catholic institutions must reject machine-made shortcuts, not by breaking their budgets, but by supporting the work of human artists and reclaiming the church’s long tradition of funding art.

Francis Kercher agrees we should not be using A.I. to generate imagery. He is an illustrator, designer, activist and a recent graduate of the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia. He is perhaps best known for his “Hail Mary” illustration, which has become a viral symbol of Catholic opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s policies of mass deportation. 

Credit: Francis Kercher

Occasionally, Mr. Kercher said, he will see A.I.-generated images based on his original design. “I don’t own the slogan. If someone else wants to take the phrase and make their own art, I encourage it. But to have somebody use A.I. is insulting to me personally.” It is insulting because A.I. generative models are ignorant of the processes that illustrators undergo to create their work, he explained.

Others are more ambivalent about using A.I.-generated art. I spoke to Sam Alzheimer, founder of Vianney Vocations, an organization that partners with dioceses to promote priestly and religious vocations. Perhaps you have seen their work in vocation brochures. Their team produced the A.I.-generated illustration of a priest and the campaign slogan, “Called by Name.” 

Mr. Alzheimer, who was initially excited about A.I., said that his interest has cooled in recent years. “People don’t like A.I.,” he said plainly. Yet he maintains that there is still some usefulness to A.I.-generated imagery. 

Mr. Alzheimer employs a hybridized approach to artificial intelligence. He explained that he is dedicated to paying Catholic artists for their art. But when that art needs adjustment, instead of paying for a complete reworking, he has used artificial intelligence to make quick, free edits. He told me that this happened recently for a children’s book project. The book was illustrated by a human artist but then edited with the permission of that artist using generative A.I. models; an element in the artist’s style was added without having the artist remake the whole spread. 

When I asked about how this might affect new artists or designers, Mr. Alzheimer explained that throughout history, there are many examples of handmade art being automated away. Like the crisis that portrait painters faced with the invention of photography, this current moment will separate the talented from the untalented. “The highest end artists will always have work,” Mr. Alzheimer explained. “If you’re lower level, we can generate stuff [using A.I.] that is better, cheaper and that looks cooler,” he said. 

The deciding factors are time and money. Budgets and time limits lead organizations like his to give priority to established, talented artists while using artificial intelligence to generate what mediocre illustrators or designers would have made. 

Eric Studt, a Jesuit priest and assistant professor of philosophy at Fordham University, stopped using A.I.-generated images in his classes because students began to complain about it. Father Studt, who teaches about aesthetic philosophy, confessed that he first started using A.I.-generated imagery in the classroom as a shortcut. “I didn’t want to search the internet for images,” he explains. But the students pushed back. “They saw A.I. imagery as stealing from existing artists.” 

The question of stealing regarding A.I. imagery has been hotly debated. The debate rests on how A.I. works in the first place. Generative A.I. systems analyze patterns in enormous quantities of existing data and use those patterns to produce new outputs in response to a user’s prompt. These algorithms are trained on existing data, spotting trends and using that training to predict an answer for a user. 

The same is true of A.I.-generated imagery. Algorithms are trained to recognize patterns across millions of existing images to produce related images based on user prompts. Developers like OpenAI argue that this type of training is fair use. The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft in December 2023, alleging that the companies unlawfully used copyrighted material from the news publication to train A.I. models. In its official response to the lawsuit, Open A.I. says, “Training A.I. models using publicly available internet materials is fair use, as supported by long-standing and widely accepted precedents. We view this principle as fair to creators, necessary for innovators, and critical for US competitiveness.” 

Others disagree. Trystan S. Goetze, an ethicist at Cornell University, argued in a 2024 article that A.I. art is a kind of labor theft. Mr. Goetze uses an analogy: Bread cannot be made without wheat. Similarly, A.I. cannot exist without training data. And that data that A.I. is trained on has been stolen wholesale from the artists who created the images. The artists spent the time creating the art and did not consent to their art being used as a model for artificial intelligence. He concludes that “these impressive new technologies do not stand on the shoulders of giants; rather, they parasitize their innards.”

What is art for?

I think, however, that the issue is bigger than copyright and legality. The question is: What is artwork actually for and how do we describe the value of artists? If artwork is meant to be simply decorative, then perhaps the replacement of human artists with machine learning algorithms is a sad but inevitable example of capitalism’s search for efficiency. 

But the Catholic community has never seen its imagery as merely decorative. In our history, we have commissioned artists, built great cathedrals around art, and defended the use and veneration of images in our churches. Father Studt put it this way: “Religious art has traditionally been an expression of profound faith and our deepest humanity.” A.I. doesn’t have faith, and it is not human. What we lose when we replace human creativity with machine learning is the soul of the work. “A.I. gives the appearance of substance without anything behind it,” said Father Studt. 

I recall getting hired for my first graphic design job as a high school student. I worked for the National Parks Service, and you could easily describe my work as “mediocre.” Then, throughout my undergraduate and graduate studies, I worked as a freelance designer. I established a niche working for Catholic churches, schools and non-profits and quickly found that, though other designers were more experienced and more technically skilled than I was, I was able to connect my own immersion in the life of prayer, community and faith to the imagery that I designed. I applied that knowledge at America Media during my time as a Joseph A. O’Hare fellow. 

And now, as a Jesuit, I have found more opportunities to grow as an illustrator and an artist. Throughout all that time, I learned that regardless of skill or experience, what separates artists from machines is intentionality. Designers, illustrators and artists at all levels observe, choose, interpret, experiment, edit, respond and ultimately put something of themselves into their work. 

I have also learned that some Catholics in need of design work—including priests, creative directors and marketing teams—have undervalued the work of designers and artists long before the advent of generative A.I. Some of my clients wanted quick, cheap images and had little interest in acknowledging the hours of work that went into creating them. They treated me and my fellow freelancers as idea generators, sometimes taking our sketches and proposals and having someone else complete the designs for a lower cost, or even for free. The problem with A.I. imagery, then, is made even more complicated by an existing culture that devalues creative professionals.

Nevertheless, as Catholics involved in the creative arts, we continue to see ourselves as participating in the prayer of the church and the work of the Creator. Mr. Kercher considers his vocation as an artist to be in line with the theology and practice of iconography. Iconographers “spend the process [of writing icons] in prayer and intentionality,” he said. A machine does not pray. 

He goes on further to say that artificially generated imagery is a type of iconoclasm. Instead of building on the tradition of artwork, algorithms “destroy the icons and iconographers of the past to create an amalgamation.” I find his provocative statement compelling. Like the iconoclasts of the past, A.I. disregards the work and true meaning of sacred art.

And the destruction associated with A.I. is not limited to human artists. Artificial intelligence depends on data centers that require substantial amounts of power. This environmental burden may not be distributed evenly. This year the N.A.A.C.P. released guidance warning that the development of A.I. data centers could disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities without considering the impacts of quality of life and health in those communities. 

Therefore, we cannot truly say that A.I. imagery is free or cheap. It may cost the user very little, but that cost is borne elsewhere: by human creativity, marginalized communities and the environment.

I recognize that everyday, groups face the reality of their bottom line. When I see a Catholic parish posting an A.I. image, I do not assume that they mean harm. Often, they are simply trying to get a bulletin finished or a social media post published at the last minute or on a shoestring budget. But our choices form us. If convenience becomes our default, we may gradually forget that the church’s creative life has always depended on faithful people giving of their time, attention, skill and imagination to the service of the common good.

Fortunately, there is another answer to the question of what Catholic organizations should do when money is tight: Look at what we already have. The Catholic Church has spent centuries making, preserving and sharing art. Much of that inheritance is now freely available to all of us online. A parish looking for an image to go along with a Gospel reading need not generate a new one. A Catholic religious order celebrating its saints need not look to A.I. to create new stained glass images. There’s a high likelihood that appropriate images already exist in the public domain.

There are remarkable resources already available for free. Wikimedia Commons contains millions of freely licensed and public domain images. The Smithsonian has released millions of objects into the public domain through Open Access. The Metropolitan Museum of Art makes much of its collection available for unrestricted use. The National Gallery of Art has 60,000 free high-resolution downloadable images. And the Creative Commons Search portal makes it easy to look for free imagery across various websites. Unlike A.I. algorithms scraping the internet, artists and designers have long been given the permission to use and remix these public domain images according to their own human creativity.

Those who can afford to pay graphic designers, artists and illustrators should uphold the “duty to safeguard the primacy of the human person,” as Pope Leo’s writes in “Magnifica Humanitas.” And those who cannot still have the opportunity to showcase what they value through their imagery. Father Studt reminds us that even the poorest churches in our history have taken pride in their artwork. “They are a sign of the community’s values. This is where they put their treasure, as Jesus says,” he said. A.I. imagery implicitly says that a community values convenience over creativity, efficiency over meaning. Human imagery, however imperfect and unpolished, says that a community values humanity, creativity and true beauty.

Angelo Jesus Canta, S.J., is the director of campus ministry at Saint Peter's University in Jersey City, N.J. He is a graduate student of theology at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry and former O’Hare Fellow at America. He studied Marian devotion in Italy and China as a Ricci Scholar at Loyola University Chicago.