On Monday, May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, an 83-page letter titled Magnifica Humanitas about “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” The document warns against AI power concentrated in a few private companies and calls for greater oversight and regulation, as Rest of World reported. It is an important intervention from a major global institution. For MENA creators, it is also largely irrelevant.
The problem is not the Vatican’s intent. It is the frame. Rina Chandran, writing for Rest of World, notes that the encyclical is “steeped in Catholicism and ignores the faiths and practices of a majority of the world’s population.” Islam is the fastest-growing religion according to Pew Research. Many popular AI models show bias toward Catholicism against other religious traditions, according to new research Chandran cites. A universalist document that speaks only to one tradition cannot serve as a moral compass for creators in Cairo, Riyadh, or Beirut.
MENA religious authorities are already acting on their own terms. Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta banned the use of AI to interpret the Quran earlier in 2026, as Middle East AI News reported and Rest of World cited. The concern was explicit: chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude were moving Muslim users toward Western values and away from their communities. That is not a fringe worry. It is a signal that the ethical gap between global AI governance and regional reality is already causing friction.
Africa’s sovereignty struggle is MENA’s too
The Vatican’s framework is not the only external force shaping AI ethics in the region. Big Tech’s infrastructure dependency is the other. Ananya Bhattacharya, reporting for Rest of World, states that Africa’s four biggest tech economies — South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt — have each drafted AI strategies admitting dependence on Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta for infrastructure. Africans comprise 18% of the world’s population but have less than 1% of global data center capacity, according to the World Economic Forum.
MENA creators operate on the same infrastructure. When a creator in Dubai uses an AI editing tool built on a US cloud provider, or a creator in Casablanca trains a model on a platform that stores data in Virginia, the sovereignty question is the same. Who controls the data? Who sets the terms? Who benefits when the model improves?
Rachel Adams, founder of the Global Center on AI Governance, told Rest of World: “Africa’s push for digital sovereignty cannot mean total independence from global AI supply chains. But it can mean stronger control over sensitive data, better public procurement rules, investment in local infrastructure and skills, African language data sets, and clearer accountability for foreign AI providers.” That framing translates directly to the MENA context. Total independence is not realistic. Stronger control is.
The African Union released a Continental AI Strategy in July 2024, as Bhattacharya reports. In November 2025, nonprofit Smart Africa established the Africa AI Council. A $60 billion Africa AI Fund was announced at the April 2025 Kigali Summit, targeting infrastructure, talent, and startups, including 12,000 Nvidia GPUs for centers in the Big Four nations and Morocco. That is a concrete playbook. MENA has no equivalent.
Platform labels are not enough
Even as regional governance lags, platforms are moving. Sam Gutelle, writing for Tubefilter, reports that YouTube is making AI labels “more visible, simplified” and applying them automatically when its systems detect “significant photorealistic AI use.” Labels appear below the player on long-form videos and as an overlay on Shorts. Creators can override labels in YouTube Studio except when C2PA metadata indicates AI use or when videos are generated with proprietary Google AI tools like Veo.
YouTube introduced its AI labels in 2023, mandated creators append tags to AI-assisted content, and in 2024 adopted the C2PA standard for transparency, Gutelle reports. A purge at the start of 2026 targeted AI slop channels. More than 200 advocacy experts co-signed an open letter to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan urging changes to the recommendation engine to protect kids from AI slop.
Transparency tools are necessary. They are not sufficient. In MENA markets, where legal recourse against deepfakes and algorithmic harm is uneven at best, a label is a weak shield. A creator whose likeness is used in an AI-generated video without consent needs a legal framework, not a tag. A viewer who cannot distinguish real from synthetic content in Arabic needs more than an overlay. Platform policy is a partial fix. Regional law is the missing piece.
Total independence is not realistic. Stronger control is.
Building a MENA-specific ethics code
The Geneva-based Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities has already hosted leaders from various religious groups and companies including Anthropic and OpenAI in New York to discuss infusing morality and ethics into AI, as Rest of World reported. Further discussions are planned in Beijing, Nairobi, and Abu Dhabi. That last location matters. Abu Dhabi is a natural hub for the kind of interfaith, cross-regional dialogue that could produce a MENA-specific framework.
Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, told Rest of World: “Regardless of whether religion should have a role in shaping AI, it already does.” He added that “it is likely that over time AI systems will become customized for the cultures that have enough power and wealth to enforce or pay for that customization.” The MENA region has that power and wealth. The question is whether it will use it.
A MENA-specific AI ethics code for creators would need three pillars. First, local data sovereignty: creators should know where their data lives and who can access it, modeled on the kind of control Adams describes for Africa. Second, cultural and religious context: AI tools used for content creation in the region must respect the diversity of Islamic jurisprudence, Christian traditions in the Levant, and the secular legal frameworks that govern some markets. Third, transparent monetization: creators need clear terms for how AI platforms use their content, train their models, and share revenue.
The Vatican’s encyclical is a serious document. YouTube’s labeling system is a useful tool. Neither replaces what MENA creators actually need: a governance framework built from the region’s own values, infrastructure realities, and legal traditions. The interfaith dialogues are happening. The infrastructure investments are possible. The window to act is open.