Gen Z boos AI boosters as backlash grows

Gen Z’s resistance to generative AI is becoming harder to dismiss. Recent graduation ceremonies in the US saw students boo speakers who praised AI, while Martin Scorsese’s decision to join generative AI company Black Forest Labs for storyboarding sparked online backlash from people worried the technology could “ruin cinema.”

At the University of Florida, property developer Gloria Caulfield called AI “the next Industrial Revolution,” only to be met with boos from humanities graduates facing debt and job insecurity. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta were also booed at commencement events after endorsing AI, highlighting a wider generational divide over the technology.

The article points to survey data suggesting younger people are not the eager adopters they are often assumed to be. A recent Gallup study found Gen Z is unconvinced that AI improves creativity or critical thinking, and most believe it may come at a cost, especially to learning. By contrast, a 2025 Thomson Reuters survey found baby boomers were the most “ambitious group” in predicting AI’s arrival in the workplace.

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That split may reflect very different experiences of technology and work. Baby boomers moved from analog tools such as typewriters into the digital era of word processors, making AI appear to many of them as a dramatic productivity leap. Technology writer Josiah Gogarty also argues some older users simply find AI entertaining, citing the spread of low-quality AI-generated “slop” on Facebook among older audiences.

For younger people, though, the stakes look different. The source argues that AI can feel less like a helpful tool than a force tied to job insecurity, endless reskilling, and systems that reduce the value of human labor. When students booed him, Borchetta responded: “Deal with it. Do something about it. It’s a tool, make it work for you.” The article argues that message rings hollow for a generation entering a far less secure economy.

It also draws on Shoshana Zuboff, who describes a social environment shaped by decades of neoliberal market economics that undermines self-worth and self-determination. In that context, Gen Z’s pushback is not just about disliking AI products. It is a demand for more agency over a future that many tech leaders present as inevitable.