DeepfakeMedium
Purported AI-Generated Video Portrays Pope Leo XIV Addressing Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso
- Occurred
- May 23, 2025
- Published
- May 23, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A purported 36-minute AI-generated deepfake video circulated online portraying Pope Leo XIV delivering a speech to Burkina Faso's President Ibrahim Traoré. The Vatican Press Office and Catholic broadcaster Patrick Madrid publicly confirmed the video was fabricated.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- Unknown actors
- Pro-Traoré information ecosystem
Harmed parties
- Roman Catholic public
- Pope Leo XIV
- Epistemic integrity
Tags
- deepfake
- impersonation
- Papacy
- Roman Catholic Church
- Burkina Faso
- disinformation
- misinformation
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI-generated video depicting a non-existent Pope and real political leader, confirmed as fabricated by authorities.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8