Zoe Kleinman

Zoe Kleinman connects complex shifts in artificial intelligence and digital technology with their real-world impact on people and institutions. She is technology editor at the BBC, covering artificial intelligence, big tech, cybersecurity, online safety, regulation and consumer gadgets across television, radio and digital platforms. She has reported on technology for nearly two decades and is now one of the organisation’s senior voices on how AI and connected technologies are reshaping society. Her work blends access to global tech leaders with reporting on everyday experiences of digital change, from smart glasses and gaming to social media addiction and online misinformation.

Artificial intelligence, power and safety

Kleinman treats artificial intelligence as the core of today’s technology agenda, examining it as an industry and a system of power rather than a narrow technical topic. She has led the BBC’s coverage of major government-level AI events, including the UK government’s AI Safety Summit and a subsequent Paris AI Action Summit, framing them as tests of how states and companies try to steer fast-moving AI development. She interviews senior figures such as the chief executives of Apple and Microsoft and high-ranking AI executives, using those conversations to probe responsibility, regulation and the limits of optimism around frontier systems. In live reporting on AI incidents, such as a government review triggered by an AI program hack, she asks whether the sector has returned to a “move fast and break things” era and connects technical failures with institutional risk. Her analysis of the Musk–Altman legal dispute over AI development focuses on which players in the AI industry gain leverage from regulatory and reputational battles, emphasising long-term consequences rather than personalities.

Consumer tech, gadgets and gaming

Her consumer technology coverage focuses on how new devices and services change everyday behaviour as much as they showcase innovation. In reporting on Meta’s AI-powered smart glasses and their later camera-free successor, she tracks the tension between immersive features and concerns about privacy, surveillance and the way wearers are perceived in public.

She frequently explores gadgets, gaming and new formats such as virtual reality, racing drones in the Nevada desert, spending a night in a house full of robots and climbing Mount Everest in VR to test how realistic and accessible these experiences feel.

Her investigations into children’s in-game spending in video and mobile games document how design and payment mechanics can lead to large unintended bills and have been cited in parliamentary scrutiny of gaming and gambling. Even when covering highly technical topics such as quantum chips or driverless cars, she anchors the story in whether these technologies are ready for ordinary users and what practical trade-offs they introduce.

Online safety, regulation and digital harms

Another thread in Kleinman’s work is the cost of living in a networked world, from cybersecurity breaches to social media’s impact on mental health and democracy. She reports on online safety and digital regulation, including data scandals such as the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica case, the volatility of cryptocurrency markets and debates over content moderation and online harms. Her coverage of social media addiction and landmark legal decisions against platforms treats lawsuits as tests of how far society will tolerate attention-driven design and what precedents will shape future regulation. She has written about her own experience of “brain fog” during a live bulletin, using it to open a wider conversation about perimenopause, workplace expectations and transparency on air, while noting that her daily work remains focused on technology news. She also reports on gender bias and diversity in the technology sector, linking representation issues to product decisions and the culture within powerful firms.

Format, audience and access

Kleinman works across broadcast and digital formats, combining breaking news, explainer pieces and extended interviews.

She appears on major BBC television bulletins, radio programmes and international services, and creates digital and social video aimed at audiences who encounter technology stories on mobile platforms. Her stated aim is to make complex subjects such as AI safety, quantum computing and cybercrime accessible to a mainstream audience without oversimplifying what is at stake.

She consistently foregrounds the human voice, whether interviewing global technology leaders or people affected by online harms and emerging devices, giving her stories a mix of institutional insight and lived experience. With nearly twenty years on the tech beat at the BBC and a brief that now explicitly includes AI, she occupies a senior vantage point from which she can join up corporate strategy, public policy and everyday use of technology.