Faith and AI leaders set Paris roundtable on global covenant

Religious leaders, AI executives, ethicists and academics will meet in Paris on June 26 for the second global roundtable on a proposed Faith-AI Covenant. The initiative aims to set ethical guardrails for AI development and will later move to cities including Nairobi, Beijing, Singapore, Bengaluru, Rome and Abu Dhabi.

Why it matters: - The Faith-AI Covenant is trying to define shared moral principles for AI before the technology’s influence spreads further. - The initiative aims to keep human dignity, responsibility and the common good at the center of AI development. - The Paris meeting brings faith leaders and AI builders into the same room at a moment when AI is already shaping knowledge, judgment and guidance.

What happened: - The Interfaith Alliance for Safer Communities will convene a high-level roundtable in Paris on Friday, June 26, at Le Bristol Paris. - Dana Humaid, chief executive of IAFSC, and Baroness Joanna Shields, CEO of Precognition and the UK’s first minister for Internet Safety and Security, are co-chairing the event. - The Paris session is the second global meeting in the Faith-AI Covenant series, following the inaugural gathering in New York in April. - Participants include religious figures, AI leaders, ethicists, academics and policymakers from across Europe. - Represented organizations include OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Paris-Sorbonne University and international AI governance and diplomacy circles. - Faith-community participants include the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Greek Orthodox Church, the Chief Rabbinate of France, the Fédération Protestante de France, the Supreme Council of Muslims in Germany, the World Council of Churches and the European Buddhist Union.

The details: - The Faith-AI Covenant is meant to bring together faith leaders, technology experts and policymakers to shape the ethical foundations of future AI development. - The initiative frames AI as a force changing how people access knowledge, form judgments and seek guidance. - The release points to Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, as a recent sign of concern about human dignity in the AI era. - Anthropic will open the Paris roundtable with a session on AI literacy and how frontier AI systems work. - His Eminence Elder Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon, of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and AI Safety Connect supported the Paris convening and helped assemble faith and technology leaders across Europe.

Between the lines: - The initiative is not just about technical safety. It is also about moral authority, social trust and how societies define responsible innovation. - The mix of religious institutions, major AI companies and public policy leaders suggests an attempt to build a broad legitimacy coalition around AI ethics. - The framing reflects a concern that AI is advancing faster than public institutions and cultural norms can adapt. - The inclusion of both Western and non-Western cities in the next phase signals a push for a global, rather than Europe-centered, standard-setting effort.

What's next: - Roundtables are planned in Nairobi, Beijing, Singapore, Bengaluru and Rome. - The final global gathering will take place in Abu Dhabi. - Organizers plan to launch the final Covenant in Abu Dhabi after incorporating insights from each regional meeting. - The series is intended to continue shaping a cross-faith, cross-sector framework for AI governance.

The bottom line: - The Paris roundtable is a signal that AI ethics is moving beyond tech circles and into global interfaith diplomacy, with a push to define guardrails before the technology outruns consensus.