Archbishop of Canterbury: AI is degrading human dignity

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that AI is degrading and violating humanity.

Dame Sarah Mullally made the comments during a House of Lords debate on Friday morning, urging peers to take note of the impact of AI on human relationships and wider society.

She described AI as a “remarkable product of human creativity” but warned that it was finding “new ways of degrading [humanity] and violating it”. She also said that regulation of AI was “wholly inadequate” to prevent harm and called on big tech to adopt a “pro-human” approach.

In her speech to peers, she acknowledged the benefits of AI, including advancements in science, medicine and nursing. However, she said that human value was irreplaceable.

‘Threat to dignity’

She added: “There are sadly other uses of AI today which, rather than enhancing human dignity, are providing new ways of degrading it or violating it.

“A recent report from Durham University presented evidence that chatbots are now facilitating violence against women and girls: allowing roleplays of incest, child sexual abuse and rape with few safeguards, risking the normalisation and the legitimisation of such abuse.

“These harms are not simply the result of user misuse – AI platforms design choices, policies and governance failures are encouraging and enabling them, and existing regulation is wholly inadequate to prevent them.”

She also told peers: “We need to ensure that AI is being designed, built, regulated and used to serve our glorious humanity and not to diminish it.”

She added: “We must put people ahead of our profit, convenience or technology progress at all costs, to ensure that we harness AI to serve humanity, to be an extraordinary tool in creation of a more just, abundant and hope-filled world.”

The archbishop’s debate comes after Pope Leo XIV used his first encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, to talk about AI, saying it threatened human dignity by turning the ownership of our data into a new form of slavery.

Both Christian leaders emphasised the need for AI to serve humanity and the public good.

Dame Sarah, who is the 106th Archbishop of Canterbury and the first female to hold the role in its 1,400-year history, is also the former chief nursing officer for England. She took on the role in 1999 at the age of 37, and was the youngest ever person to do so.