From campus to the Vatican, is an AI backlash growing stronger?

At the Vatican on Monday, Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical, a letter issued to the world’s bishops. In it, he criticized artificial intelligence and what he called the “culture of power” fueling its rise, urging world leaders to regulate the technology more forcefully.

The Pope’s skepticism towards AI doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It comes after several weeks in which numerous commencement speakers championing artificial intelligence on US college campuses were booed by Gen Z graduates.

Is a backlash to AI brewing? We speak to BBC religion editor Aleem Maqbool about the Pope’s AI-critical encyclical, and to Rachel Janfaza, founder of the Gen Z research firm The Up and Up, about why Gen Z’s relationship with AI is far more complicated than many think.

Producer: Xandra Ellin, Cat Farnsworth, and Valerio Esposito

Executive producer: James Shield

Mix: Travis Evans

Senior news editor: China Collins

Photo: (Pope Leo XIV during a meeting with Italian bishops in Vatican City, 28 May 2026. Credit: Vatican Media Handout/EPA/Shutterstock)