Online Pranksters Give Vatican’s Anime Mascot ‘Luce’ a Lewd AI-Generated Makeover

A new Jubilee character meant for the Catholic Church to appeal to youth used to create pornographic imagery.

The New York Sun
An AI-generated model of the Vatican's 2025 Jubilee mascot.

To reach out to the youth, the Vatican unveiled a new Jubilee mascot for Expo 2025 in Japan to the world last week — an anime-style cartoon character named Luce. It didn’t take long for the internet to desecrate the religious character, however.

Dozens of AI-generated images show “Luce” engaged in a series of pornographic acts, according to a report from 404 Media. A search of Civitai — a site for generating and posting AI-generated content — shows at least a dozen models based on “Luce.” While they were not explicitly made to produce adult content, users can easily modify AI models, and modify the “Luce” model is exactly what many users did.

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