A collection of speeches and writings by Pope Leo XIV, titled Maps of Hope, has been certified as human-authored by the Australian firm Proudly Human, less than two months after the pontiff himself warned that artificial intelligence posed the greatest threat to humanity. The certification, carried out with the Australian Catholic University and Vatican cardinals, matters because it demonstrates a private, voluntary way of verifying authorship in the absence of government regulation, and because Leo's own encyclical had cautioned against AI dominating human affairs and concentrating power in a few hands.

Proudly Human is led by Dr Alan Finkel, Australia's former chief scientist, whose process requires authors or representatives to undergo an ID check and sign a declaration confirming AI was not used to draft the work, before a suite of four or five AI-detection tools cross-checks the text; Maps of Hope was certified as "basically purely human" within a day. Finkel argued that readers, particularly of religious material, have a right to know whether writing reflects genuine human wisdom, while Australian Catholic University's Prof Zlato Skrbis said such certification offers reassurance amid a flood of rapidly generated online content.