AI Jesus Pictures and Fake Pope Leo Videos: Who Profits From Your "Amen"

Why does an AI Jesus picture ask you to type "Amen"?

You are scrolling Facebook in the evening. A glowing image of Jesus fills the screen, holding a child in a field of light. Underneath it says "Nobody ever blesses me" or "Type Amen if you love Jesus". Thousands have already answered. You type "Amen" too, because you do love Jesus, and it costs nothing.

The next day there is another one. Jesus carved from wood. Jesus made of sand. Jesus, somehow, made of shrimp. Then a video: Pope Leo XIV, in a voice that sounds almost right, "breaks his silence" on Confession, or the Rapture, or a world leader. It runs for 25 minutes. It ends with a link.

Your "Amen" was sincere. To the page that posted the picture, it was a signal. Every reaction tells the platform to show the post to more people, and a page with a big, reactive audience is worth money. That is the whole business, and the research shows it plainly.

What did researchers find about AI Jesus pages on Facebook?

The best evidence comes from two researchers, Renée DiResta of the Stanford Internet Observatory and Josh A. Goldstein of Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. They released a preprint in March 2024 and a peer-reviewed version in the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review on 15 August 2024.

• The sample. They studied 125 Facebook pages that had each posted at least 50 AI-generated images. As of April 2024 those pages had a median of 81,000 followers.
• Jesus was a theme. The most common subjects were houses and cabins (43 pages), children (28), wood carvings (19) and images of Jesus (13).
• The crab Jesus. One AI image of "Jesus rendered as a crab worshiped by other crabs" carried the caption "Made it with my own hands!" and received 209,000 reactions and more than 4,000 comments.
• Huge reach. The images collectively received hundreds of millions of engagements. In the third quarter of 2023, a post with an AI image was among Facebook's 20 most viewed posts, with 40 million views.
• People did not know. "Comments on the images suggest that many users are unaware of their synthetic origin," the authors wrote. None of the pages labelled the images as AI.
• The feed pushed them. Facebook showed these images to people who did not follow the pages. The share of feed views from "unconnected posts" rose from 8% in mid-2021 to 24% in the third quarter of 2023, according to Meta's own reports, which the authors analysed.

Writing in The Conversation on 24 April 2024, members of the team showed one "shrimp Jesus" posted from a page called "Love God & God Love You". They explained why it works: "Shrimp Jesus makes people pause to gawk and inspires shares purely because it is so bizarre." Each like or comment "signals to the algorithmic curators that perhaps the content should be pushed into the feeds of even more people."

Meta told the researchers by email on 10 April 2024 that it had "taken action against those engaged in inauthentic behavior, and demoted the clickbait sites" the study identified.

How did fake Pope Leo videos spread after May 2025?

Pope Leo XIV was elected on 8 May 2025. The fakes started within days, and the record since then is clear and well documented.

21 May 2025, Vatican News. A 36-minute video on YouTube used footage of the Pope's 12 May audience with journalists and an AI voice to make him deliver a speech praising Ibrahim Traoré, the military ruler of Burkina Faso. Vatican News said "a 'morphing' technique was used", moving the lips to match AI-generated words, and noted the Pope "holds the same two sheets of paper throughout the entire message." It reminded readers that all of Pope Leo XIV's speeches and texts "can be consulted in full at vatican.va." Catholic News Agency later reported that the video drew at least a million views before YouTube terminated the account.

6 June 2025, AFP. An AFP investigation found dozens of YouTube and TikTok pages "churning out AI-generated messages delivered in the pope's voice". After AFP showed YouTube 26 channels posting mostly AI papal content, YouTube terminated 16 for violating its rules on spam, deceptive practices and scams, terminated another under its terms of service, and removed six more from its partner program. TikTok removed 11 accounts with more than 1.3 million combined followers. One Spanish-language TikTok video of the "Pope" received 9.6 million views. Another, which carried an AI label but still fooled viewers, was watched about 32.9 million times. AFP noted that no video on the Pope's official Instagram page had more than 6 million views.

25 June 2025, the Vatican's Instagram. A post headed as a "fake alert" about Peter's Pence warned that "fake Facebook profiles of 'Pope Leo XIV' are circulating, asking for donations" (reported by The Pillar, 27 June 2025). Rome Reports said on 28 June that the fraud clustered around the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June, the day of the real Peter's Pence collection, and that the only official way to give online is the Peter's Pence website.

July 2025, the Pope's family. Our Sunday Visitor reported on 3 July 2025 that fake social media accounts claiming to be the Pope's brothers, Louis and John Prevost, were asking people for donations to a PayPal account and offering to arrange private papal audiences. The impersonators even shared the Vatican's own warning to look more credible.

September 2025, the Vatican's own count. The Dicastery for Communication told Catholic News Agency (25 September 2025) that it had reported hundreds of accounts, mostly on YouTube: "We are witnessing the exponential proliferation of a series of YouTube channels with fake videos, all similar to one another, some speaking in the voice of Leo XIV, others in that of his translators, still others in the third person. All use artificial intelligence to make the pope say things he never said." Its newsletter said it receives "dozens of reports every day" and that "it is impossible to publicly refute each and every one of them." One fake about a murdered American activist drew more than 445,000 views in a week.

February 2026, aimed at older Catholics. The Catholic Herald reported on 8 February 2026 on a series of YouTube videos that mix real images of Pope Leo with AI visuals and "appear specifically to target elderly Catholics". Their invented stories claimed the Pope had silenced Cardinal Burke on the Third Secret of Fatima, called for full communion with the Orthodox, and cancelled the sacrament of Confession. None of it happened.

Even the Pope has been caught out by the effect. In his July 2025 interview with the journalist Elise Ann Allen, he recalled an acquaintance asking if he was all right after AI images showed him falling down the steps of St. Peter's. The pictures were "so good that they thought it was me," he said.

Are priests and bishops being faked with AI too?

Yes, and here the money motive is plain.

• Bishop Robert Barron warned in a message posted on 20 August 2025 about AI videos showing him in a restaurant brawl in Chicago, being "summoned to Rome", and explaining how to "remove demons from your toilet". He called the makers fraudsters: "What they're doing is making money off these things because they monetize them through ads… It's doing damage to my reputation, but it's also doing damage to people who are being defrauded" (Catholic News Agency via EWTN News, 21 August 2025).
• Father Mike Schmitz addressed fake videos of himself in November 2025, including clips "supposedly asking for money for Lourdes" (Ascension, 12 November 2025). WIRED reported on 5 January 2026 that one fake Schmitz urged viewers to click a link because "the spots for sending prayers are already running out." WIRED found more than 20 TikTok accounts posing as him, and TikTok removed the ones WIRED pointed out. Our profile of Father Mike Schmitz covers his real ministry.
• Father Rafael Capó of St. Thomas University in Miami told OSV News (9 April 2026) that impersonators copied his images and began "contacting people that would follow that social media, thinking that it was me", then made money appeals. OSV News listed Cardinal Marc Ouellet among other Church figures faked with AI.

This is the same old impersonation scam with a new face. Our page on fake pastor and priest gift card scams covers the text and email version. AI adds a moving, speaking face to the lie.

How do AI Jesus pages and fake Pope channels make money?

Nobody has published reliable earnings for these pages, and we will not guess a number. The documented methods are enough to see the machine.

1. Harvest the audience. Post sacred images that invite a one-word reply: "Amen", "Type yes if you believe". The DiResta and Goldstein study found the same copy-and-paste captions across many pages, phrases built to "explicitly solicit comment feedback".
2. Send people off the platform. Spam pages left a link in the first comment pointing to "heavily ad-laden content farm domains". You click, they earn from the ads.
3. Get paid by the platform. On YouTube, monetized channels share in advertising revenue through the partner program. After AFP's report, YouTube removed six fake papal channels from that program. Bishop Barron said fakes of him were monetized "through ads".
4. Sell or reuse the page. The researchers found 50 pages had changed their names, often from an entirely different subject, and some had been stolen or repurposed. A page that was formerly a church in Georgia became "Olivia Lily" and posted AI images. A band's page with about 9,400 followers was hijacked, renamed "Life Nature", and gained 300,000 followers in a week. AFP quoted Brian Patrick Green of Santa Clara University warning that such channels can "build up trust" before pushing something else.
5. Ask for money directly. Fake "Pope Leo XIV" Facebook profiles asked for Peter's Pence donations in June 2025. Fake "Prevost brothers" asked for PayPal donations and sold access to papal audiences. A fake Father Mike pushed viewers to a link with a ticking clock. Some scam pages in the study sold products that do not exist or sought personal details from people in the comments.

The scheme turns your devotion into a product. Every sincere "Amen" adds value to a page you know nothing about.

Who is behind AI Jesus pages and fake Pope videos?

Mostly people you will never identify. The public record shows networks of page operators, not a single culprit.

• Coordinated clusters. DiResta and Goldstein found six pages with more than 400,000 followers between them that declared themselves part of the "Pil&Pet Corporation", with page operators from Armenia, the United States and Georgia. Others shared captions, images and links in ways that showed common control.
• Anonymous YouTube channels. AFP found papal channels with names such as "Pope Leo XIV Vision". The Vatican says new channels appear as quickly as old ones are taken down.
• Unknown motives. The researchers were careful: "our methods provide limited insight into Page operator motivations." Some pages only chase followers. Some chase ad revenue. Some steal.

No court has ruled on any of these operators, and this page names none of them. What we can say is what the evidence shows: the pages hide that their content is AI, and many of them make money from your attention.

What has Pope Leo said about AI fakes?

Pope Leo XIV has made artificial intelligence a theme of his pontificate, and he has addressed fakes directly. Our profile of Pope Leo XIV covers his life and teaching more broadly.

• He refused an AI Pope. In his 30 July 2025 interview with Elise Ann Allen, published in September 2025, he said someone had asked to create "an artificial me" so anyone could have a personal audience with "the pope" online. "I said, 'I'm not going to authorize that.'" He added: "If there's anybody who should not be represented by an avatar, I would say the pope is high on the list," and warned that "you do end up creating a fake world and then you wonder, what is the truth?" (Catholic News Service via NCR, 18 September 2025).
• He asked us to protect our faces and voices. His message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, dated 24 January 2026 and titled "Preserving Human Voices and Faces", says: "Faces and voices are sacred." It urges people "to protect our image (photos and audio), our face and our voice, to prevent them from being used in the creation of harmful content and behaviors such as digital fraud, cyberbullying and deepfakes." It also says plainly that AI-generated or manipulated content should "be clearly marked and distinguished from content created by humans."
• He named the engagement machine. The same message says "algorithms designed to maximize engagement on social media" reward "quick emotions" and penalize reflection. That is the shrimp Jesus business model, described by a Pope.
• He put it in an encyclical. Magnifica humanitas, signed on 15 May 2026, says: "Disinformation did not begin with AI, yet today it finds a powerful amplifier in AI. The ability to manipulate content, images and videos exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives" (paragraph 132). It adds that the truth of facts "requires verification, cross-checking of sources and responsible argumentation."

The Vatican's doctrinal note Antiqua et Nova (28 January 2025) had already warned that "AI-generated fake media can gradually undermine the foundations of society" (paragraph 88) and asked everyone who shares AI content to "exercise diligence in verifying the truth of what they disseminate" (paragraph 89).

What are the red flags of AI Jesus posts and fake Pope videos?

• The caption begs for a reply. "Type Amen", "Nobody blesses me", "Made it with my own hands". These lines appear word for word across unrelated pages because they are engagement bait.
• The page has no history. Open the page's transparency details. A "Jesus" page that used to be a band, a shop or a church, or that was renamed recently, is a warning sign the researchers found again and again.
• The image is too perfect, or wrong. Extra fingers, melted hands, garbled lettering, skin that looks like plastic. The researchers spotted AI pages by exactly these errors.
• The Pope "breaks his silence". Long videos with dramatic titles about resignations, secrets, the Rapture or world leaders. Real papal news appears on vaticannews.va the same day.
• The movement repeats. Vatican News spotted the Traoré fake because the Pope held "the same two sheets of paper throughout". Looping gestures, lips slightly out of sync and an accent that is not his are giveaways.
• The channel is not official. Names like "Pope Leo XIV Vision" are fan or fake channels. Look for the verified Vatican accounts and, for priests like Bishop Barron, the blue check next to the name, as he advised.
• There is a link, a deadline or a payment. "Spots are running out", "send your prayer intention with a gift", PayPal, gift cards or crypto. The Pope does not take donations through Facebook profiles.

How can you check a Pope Leo video in one minute?

1. Search the Vatican. Go to vatican.va or vaticannews.va and search a key phrase. Vatican News says all of Pope Leo XIV's speeches and texts are published in full at vatican.va, in many languages. The Vatican told CNA: "If it is not there, it is most probably a fake."
2. Check the account. Rome Reports noted in June 2025 that his only official accounts are on X and Instagram. Pope Leo has no official Facebook page.
3. Check the date. If the video claims something huge, every Catholic outlet would be reporting it. Silence from Vatican News, CNA, OSV News and the Catholic press means it did not happen.
4. Read the description. YouTube and TikTok require labels on realistic AI content, but AFP found the YouTube label was buried at the bottom of the description and some TikTok videos had none.
5. Never pay through the video. To support the Pope's charity, use the Peter's Pence site, obolodisanpietro.va. To support your parish, use its own published giving page.
6. Report and do not share. Report the post as impersonation or false information. Sharing it to warn people still spreads it, so share the correction instead.

If you already paid, contact your bank or payment app immediately, keep the messages, report the account, and in the US file a report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

What does the faith say about fake sacred images and fake Pope words?

The Church loves images of Christ. The Catechism teaches that "the sacred image, the liturgical icon, principally represents Christ" and that "Christian iconography expresses in images the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1159 and 1160). Icons are meant to lead the heart to contemplation. An image designed to harvest clicks uses the face of Christ for another purpose, and that is worth noticing even when the picture is harmless.

Fake words in a real person's mouth are a more serious matter. "The eighth commandment forbids misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others" (Catechism 2464). "A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving" (Catechism 2482), and a video built to make you believe the Pope said something he never said fits that description. It also harms his reputation, which the Catechism protects against calumny, "remarks contrary to the truth" that harm others and give "occasion for false judgments concerning them" (Catechism 2477). Our page on what the Church teaches about lying goes further.

The Catechism also speaks to us as viewers. Media "can give rise to a certain passivity among users, making them less than vigilant consumers of what is said or shown" (Catechism 2496). Scripture gives the rule: "test everything; hold fast what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). The same test applies to anyone who claims a message from heaven, which our page on false prophets sets out.

None of this makes you foolish for having typed "Amen". Your love for Christ was real. Give it to him in prayer, at Mass and in your neighbour, where no algorithm can sell it.

Sources

• Renée DiResta and Josh A. Goldstein, "How spammers and scammers leverage AI-generated images on Facebook for audience growth", Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 15 August 2024.
• Stanford Internet Observatory, "How Spammers, Scammers and Creators Leverage AI-Generated Images on Facebook for Audience Growth", 18 March 2024.
• The Conversation, "From shrimp Jesus to fake self-portraits, AI-generated images have become the latest form of social media spam", 24 April 2024.
• Vatican News, "Fake message to President of Burkina Faso attributed to Pope", 21 May 2025.
• Catholic News Service via OSV News, "Vatican warns about fake pope quotes, videos", 22 May 2025.
• AFP Fact Check, "AI-generated Pope sermons flood YouTube, TikTok", by Bill McCarthy, 6 June 2025.
• The Pillar, "Pope Leo XIV or 'Pope Leo XIV': How to spot a fake online pope", by Luke Coppen, 27 June 2025.
• Rome Reports, "Vatican Scam Alert: Fake Pope Leo Profiles on Facebook Asking for Money", 28 June 2025.
• Our Sunday Visitor, "Digital deception and the duty to be wise", by Jaymie Stuart Wolfe, 3 July 2025.
• Catholic News Agency via EWTN News, "Bishop Barron warns about fake AI videos impersonating him", 21 August 2025.
• Catholic News Service via National Catholic Reporter, "Pope nixes 'virtual pope' idea, explains concerns about AI", 18 September 2025.
• Catholic News Agency via EWTN News, "Vatican struggles against spread of 'deepfake' images of Pope Leo XIV", by Hannah Brockhaus, 25 September 2025.
• Ascension, "Addressing the FAKE Videos of Me (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)", 12 November 2025.
• WIRED, "AI Deepfakes Are Impersonating Pastors to Try to Scam Their Congregations", by Kat Tenbarge, 5 January 2026.
• Pope Leo XIV, Message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, "Preserving Human Voices and Faces", 24 January 2026.
• The Catholic Herald, "Fake videos of Pope Leo target elderly Catholics", by Thomas Edwards, 8 February 2026.
• OSV News, "Deepfake popes and bishops abound: Here's how Church can push back 'AI attack' on truth", by Kimberley Heatherington, 9 April 2026.
• Pope Leo XIV, Encyclical Letter Magnifica humanitas, 15 May 2026, paragraph 132.
• Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education, Antiqua et Nova, 28 January 2025, paragraphs 87 to 89.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 1159, 1160, 2464, 2477, 2482 and 2496.

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