By the time Pope Leo XIV published his recent encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” he and his predecessor Pope Francis had already been the subjects of dozens of viral AI images and videos. As the literal living embodiment of a centuries-old institution, the Pope is perfect fodder for an uncanny remix. Almost a decade before the viral puffer coat image, Ellen Degeneres touted a digitally altered video showing Pope Frances doing the old tablecloth trick.
The first American Pope seems like he can take a joke, and his AI encyclical doesn’t fret over papal deepfakes. Instead, the pontiff addresses a laundry-list of serious moral challenges that society faces as AI continues to evolve, from labor rights to just war. Interestingly, the Pope says nothing about copyright in his exhaustive treatment of AI’s moral dimensions. I’m no theologian, but I have a few ideas about why copyright doesn’t belong in the mix, and why policymakers should follow the Pope’s example and turn their attention elsewhere.
One thing the Pope likely appreciates about copyright that zealots like Ed Newton-Rex do not is that copyright is not a natural law handed down from on high, but a complex, contingent, man-made policy with mostly utilitarian goals. While some jurisdictions have “moral rights” provisions that protect authors’ non-economic interests (attribution, preservation), the heart of copyright is a complex body of economic rights. Like a tax code or a zoning plan, the copyright system can be shaped in part by moral considerations, but its ultimate goal is to promote the general welfare, not to protect any one favored stakeholder group.
Indeed, copyright includes protection for fair use and the public domain alongside its exclusive economic monopolies. The public’s reuse rights are just as important as private economic rights, if not more so, because human creativity and flourishing depend on the freedom to seek knowledge and engage with culture. No one owns ideas or facts, and there is no moral basis for limiting access and reuse of these public goods. AI training is, in essence, the distillation of facts, ideas, and other common cultural building blocks from their copyrighted containers. These building blocks belong to everyone. That’s why human rights documents like the UN Declaration of Human Rights include language about the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and to participate in culture, alongside recognition for the rights of artists to profit from their work. So, even if you look at copyright through a human rights lens, there’s no support for maximizing private control at the expense of public access, including through AI training and use.
Another reason copyrights shouldn’t be confused with fundamental human rights is that most copyrights don’t belong to humans; they are typically sold or licensed away by authors and exploited by commercial companies. Corporations may be people in the eyes of Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court, but the Pope knows better. The vast majority of commercial copyrights are controlled by a handful of global oligopolies—five book publishers, three record labels, and a handful of movie studios, many of which are owned in turn by diversified global conglomerates. They exploit their copyrights purely for profit, often at the expense of authors. Protecting these entities from competition or securing them a massive windfall is not the kind of thing religious leaders or policymakers should be worried about.
The Pope’s encyclical addresses a number of important and weighty questions. The Pope was right to recognize that these questions, including about creativity and creative labor, have little to do with maximizing copyright exclusivity at the public’s expense. Copyright’s balanced framework includes protection for AI developers and users that have just as much claim to moral recognition as the claims of copyright owners. Indeed, the purely economic nature of copyrights, their easy alienation from creative workers, and their consolidation in the hands of corporate exploiters, makes them a poor fit for moral crusading. Policymakers would do well to imitate Pope Leo XIV in dodging the copyright trap.