Pope Francis sounded an alarm Wednesday over the perils of artificial intelligence and manipulated images circulated online, saying he was a victim of a viral deepfake photo.

An image of the pope wearing a white puffer coat and a large silver crucifix in March garnered millions of views online before it was revealed to have been created by someone using the AI software program Midjourney.

Francis, in a message for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Social Communications, said the new technologies pose potential danger for users.

“Depending on the inclination of the heart, everything within our reach becomes either an opportunity or a threat,” the 87-year-old pontiff said. “Every technical extension of our humanity can be a means of loving service or of hostile domination.”

AI can aid communication between people who don’t speak the same language and “render accessible and understandable an enormous patrimony of written knowledge from past ages,” but the technology can also be a source of “cognitive pollution,” he said.

An example is “fake news” and the “creation and diffusion of images that appear perfectly plausible but [are] false,” Francis said.

“I too have been an object” of deepfake images, he said.

The pope also decried “audio messages that use a person’s voice to say things which that person never said.”

Francis said users would have to choose how AI will impact future communications.

“It is up to us to decide whether we will become fodder for algorithms or will nourish our hearts with that freedom without which we cannot grow in wisdom,” he said.

• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.