{"id":"camfeed-175","numeric_id":175,"short_title":"AI, copyright, and the 'new form of colonialism'","seo_title":"As Australia considers copyright reforms, Pope Leo's AI adviser Father Paolo Benanti issues a warning - ABC News","social_title":"Pope's AI adviser warns Australia's copyright changes risk 'new form of colonialism'","headline":"As Australia considers copyright reforms, Pope Leo's AI adviser Father Paolo Benanti issues a warning","teaser_title":"Pope's AI adviser warns Australia's copyright changes risk 'new form of colonialism'","titles_source_url":"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800","titles_fetched_at":"2026-10-14T08:11:57+00:00","title":"Pope's AI adviser warns Australia's copyright changes risk 'new form of colonialism'","canonical_url":"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800","published_at":"2026-10-14T07:36:56+00:00","source_modified_at":"2026-10-14T07:38:00+00:00","archive_updated_at":"2026-10-14T09:16:28+00:00","item_url":"https://camfeed.cameronwilson.com.au/items/175","json_url":"https://camfeed.cameronwilson.com.au/items/175.json","markdown_url":"https://camfeed.cameronwilson.com.au/items/175.md","source":"ABC News","source_type":"abc","type":"news article","content_role":"primary","author":"Cameron Wilson","summary":"Father Paolo Benanti is a Franciscan friar but he's also a key adviser to the Vatican on AI and he has a warning for Australia on the actions of AI companies.","text":"Father Paolo Benanti is a Franciscan friar but he's also a key adviser to the Vatican on AI and he has a warning for Australia on the actions of AI companies.","has_full_text":true,"mcp_visible":true,"mcp_full_text_allowed":true,"full_text_word_count":858,"full_text_status":"ok","full_text_source_url":"https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800","full_text_fetched_at":"2026-10-14T08:11:57+00:00","has_transcript":false,"transcript_status":"","transcript_kind":"","transcript_char_count":0,"topics":["AI","technology policy","platforms"],"quoted_author":"","quoted_url":"","quoted_text":"","citation":"Cameron Wilson, \"Pope's AI adviser warns Australia's copyright changes risk 'new form of colonialism'\", ABC News, 2026-10-14, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800","citation_markdown":"Cameron Wilson, [Pope's AI adviser warns Australia's copyright changes risk 'new form of colonialism'](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800) — ABC News — 2026-10-14","attribution":"Originally published at ABC News. Link to the canonical ABC URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800","full_text":"Australia risks reviving a \"new form of colonialism\" if it allows AI companies to train on copyrighted work without permission and send profits offshore, warned an influential AI adviser to the Vatican.\n\nAsked about Australia's consideration of copyright changes to attract AI training, Father Paolo Benanti compared the risk with Europe's history of taking resources from other countries and profiting from them elsewhere.\n\n\"You go, you take resources, and you monetise it outside the place where the resources [were],\" he said.\n\nHe said Australian writing could become another resource used by foreign companies, with the money and tax revenue ending up overseas.\n\n“Is it ... a new form of colonialism from foreign power that could ... exploit from the resources and monetise it outside of the place where they are taken?\" he asked.\n\n\"So is this fair? Is this something that will produce real richness or pay back to Australia? I don't know.\"\n\nThose were questions he said he would ask before voting on such a change.\n\nLast month, the ABC reported that the Attorney-General's department was quietly consulting on changes that would mean AI companies could train on copyrighted content unless its owner had opted out.\n\nIn June Attorney-General Michelle Rowland told 7.30: \"This government has repeatedly said that there are no plans to weaken copyright protections when it comes to AI.\"\n\nEarlier this week, the federal parliament's AI committee took the unusual step of pre-empting its own process to write a letter that urged reforms to pave the way for AI training.\n\nFather Benanti praised Australia's efforts to regulate social media and AI when he met Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week, and told 7.30 other countries should follow Australia's lead in reining in tech companies with policies like the teen social media ban.\n\nOn his visit to Australia as a guest of the Italian Embassy, he described the country as being at the \"foremost frontier\" and defended it against aspersions about the effectiveness of laws like the social media minimum age.\n\nHe said that the essential democratic principle was that \"no one should be above the law\".\n\nThat included overseas social media companies, which he said could rely on protections in their home countries to avoid other governments' rules.\n\nHe said Australia's first steps were important, and hoped other countries would follow.\n\nWorking together would give governments more power to make technology companies comply with the rules in countries where they wanted to do business, he said.\n\n'We need a brain helmet'\n\nFather Benanti studied engineering before becoming a Franciscan friar and a professor specialising in the ethics of technology. He advised Pope Francis on artificial intelligence and now advises his successor, Pope Leo.\n\nIn May, Pope Leo presented his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, a major papal letter sharing his teachings about humanity in the age of AI.\n\nThe landmark document made global headlines for criticising autonomous weapons, as well as algorithms that could deny people access to healthcare, employment or security.\n\nFather Benanti said the encyclical resonated beyond the Catholic Church's followers because it addressed moral questions they were already asking about how technology could change their lives.\n\n\"Human dignity is the core,\" he said.\n\nHe said its appeal came from keeping those questions open for public debate and allowing society to shape how AI is governed.\n\nFather Benanti's concerns about AI extend to the emotional attachments people can form with the technology.\n\nHe is concerned that companies exploit loneliness and romantic attachment to their products to make money from people's emotions.\n\n\"Those are not neutral things, but are things that are designed by someone,\" he said.\n\nThe question he said, was whether these products could operate without laws to protect the most vulnerable people.\n\nAsked about protecting children, he compared the adoption of AI and smartphones by minors to his experience with riding motorised scooters as a child.\n\nWhen he was old enough he was given a small vehicle rather than a powerful model that could kill him.\n\nHe said smartphones put the same device in the hands of children and adults, without being tailored to children's capabilities.\n\n\"Probably we need a brain helmet,\" he said.\n\nBusiness versus faith\n\nFather Benanti believes tech companies have been courting religious leaders to attempt to protect their business interests.\n\nHe's been part of meetings with leaders of top tech companies held at company locations, rather than at the Vatican.\n\nTheir purpose, he said, \"was not because they would like to talk about faith\".\n\n\"There are politicians, there are religious leaders, there are scientists and things like that,\" he said.\n\n\"They don't want to have leaders against them that can move the people.\n\n\"So it's a matter of business-oriented interest.\"\n\nFather Benanti said these leaders tried to persuade them of their own beliefs — that their work was bringing humanity close to an extraordinary moment in history, and even the possibility that AI could be conscious.\n\nAsked whether he found the pitch compelling, his answer was blunt.\n\n\"Not at all.\"\n\nWatch 7.30, Mondays to Thursdays 7:30pm on ABC iview and ABC TV\n\nContact 7.30 Do you know more about this story? Get in touch with 7.30 here.","full_text_attribution":"Full text extracted from the ABC News article at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-14/pope-leo-xiv-ai-adviser-paolo-benanti-australia-copyright/107263800. Attribute to ABC News and link to the canonical URL."}