{"schema":"postcutoff/case@1","as_of":"2026-10-07T23:43:00+02:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/why/019-pope-leo-ai-still-thinks-francis-is-pope/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/why/019-pope-leo-ai-still-thinks-francis-is-pope/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"Adam Bicz","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"title":"Unspecified AI chatbot answered as if Francis were still pope","id":"019-pope-leo-ai-still-thinks-francis-is-pope","date":"2026-06-06","model":"Unspecified AI chatbot (the article does not name it)","provider":"unknown","source":"public","severity":"low","task":"Pope Leo XIV asked an AI \"What should the pope say to the Spanish bishops?\"","failure":"It answered as if Francis were still pope (\"Pope Francis would say…\"), about a year after Leo XIV's election","quote":"Pope Francis would say…","what_was_true":"The person asking was Pope Leo XIV himself, pope since May 2025.","truth_url":"https://aleteia.org/2026/06/08/pope-leo-xiv-laughs-as-ai-forgets-he-is-the-pontiff/","sensitive":false,"body_md":"## What happened\nAt a lunch with the Spanish bishops during his Madrid trip, Pope Leo XIV told them a story. This is **secondhand**: the remark was not recorded or part of any official speech. Yago de la Cierva, a member of the papal visit's organising committee who was at the lunch, recounted it, and Aleteia reported it on 8 Jun 2026. A CNA/National Catholic Register story reported the same anecdote.\n\n## What was said (verbatim as reported; secondhand)\n> He asked it, \"What should the pope say to the Spanish bishops?\" The artificial intelligence chat bot replied, \"Pope Francis would say…\" So, he interrupted it and said, \"Ah, but I think there is another pope now.\" The AI then replied, \"Oh, that's true, sorry, it's now Pope Leo.\"\n\nThe Pope's conclusion: \"We, on the other hand, have another algorithm. And this other algorithm leads us to love people, to accompany people, to make ourselves servants of the Word.\"\n\n## Why this is striking\n- The subject of the outdated fact was the person asking. This is the purest form of \"the model doesn't believe the present exists\".\n- Unlike cases 011 and 016, this model **accepted the correction immediately**. This is the mild end of the range.\n- It came two weeks after Leo XIV's AI encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas*.\n\n## Correction\nImmediate, after one prompt from the user.\n\n## Lesson\nEven mild cutoff blindness decides how an answer is *framed*. The model assumed the old world first. Without a correction the user would have got advice written for the previous pope.\n\n## Sources\n- Aleteia, \"Pope Leo XIV laughs as AI 'forgets' he is the pontiff\" (2026-06-08): <https://aleteia.org/2026/06/08/pope-leo-xiv-laughs-as-ai-forgets-he-is-the-pontiff/>\n- National Catholic Register (CNA), \"Pope Leo XIV Jokes in Spain That AI Still Thinks Pope Francis Is in Charge\": <https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-leo-xiv-jokes-in-spain-that-ai-still-thinks-pope-francis-is-in-charge>","related":["016-chatgpt-refuses-pope-leo-photo-edit","011-chatbots-deny-pope-leo-xiv-exists"]}