NEW AI Forum NZ Progress Report

Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, events, jobs and education.

We think we’re onto a good thing with The AI Corner. And the data proves it…

• Open rates +63%, last week's issue hit 73% (industry standard is ~30%).

• Subscriber growth of 15-30% each week.

• Outreach from people requesting to be featured, or for AI use case and business advice.

• The kicker: A recommendation to join our newsletter at the AI Forum's event.

We're not trying to toot our own horn. This illustrates the need for a space to bring people together to learn, connect and share about AI, which directly aligns with our mission to accelerate AI adoption across New Zealand.

With that, we're exploring starting a NZ AI Digital Community—a space to drive innovation.

If this sounds like a Community you’re interested in, let us know by hitting 👉 I’m Interested 👈 to send us an email.

All levels welcome (even AI skeptics!). Enthusiasm is the only entry criteria.

This week’s highlights:
🚀 Kiwi AI adoption surges 15%
💭 Local experts predict AI trends
🏉 Wallabies & Rabbitohs AI fail
🔍 Radiology revolution in Aus
📚 Meta steals Māori taonga
🤖 AI waiters serve London

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NZ ADOPTION

💼 NZ Businesses See 15% Jump In AI Adoption

📣 Word On The Street: AI Forum's latest report shows 82% of Kiwi Orgs now use AI, although we rank 48th globally in AI readiness.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Businesses experience a "domino effect" where AI adoption in one area rapidly spreads across functions.

• Administration (65%), marketing (60%) and software development (55%) lead adoption while customer service uptake stalls.

• Kiwis need one hour to produce what Americans do in 40 minutes and Australians in 48 minutes, highlighting our productivity gap.

🏘️ Our Take: Kiwi businesses are seeing undeniably positive results from AI adoption, yet we need to be mindful that the sample likely represents our most tech-forward organisations rather than the broader business population. The emerging "sinking lid" approach—vacant positions are filled with tech rather than new hires—requires thoughtful navigation. With Ireland (a similar-sized export economy) seeing remarkable productivity growth in recent years, and only 28% of NZ businesses including Māori voices in AI development, we have both an opportunity and responsibility to ensure our AI future works for all Kiwis.

AI TRENDS

🧠 AI Trends & Predictions From Kiwi Experts

📣 Word On The Street: "Rethink what you know about search—your kids already have," warn NZ experts. With OpenAI v5 promising 100x more power, we're facing an acceleration no industry can ignore.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Mark Byrne (Dentsu): OpenAI v5 brings 100x more power in 2025. Agentic AI will order groceries based on fridge photos.

• Nyssa Waters (possibl.ai): Google search replaced by agent-optimised information, among children especially.

• Graeme Blake (Blutui): AI-assisted tools cut development time from hours to seconds. AI coding assistants boost efficiency by 25%.

🏘️ Our Take: Throw out your five-year business plan. GenAI is already rewriting how we operate—at work, we're building niche customer tools in 20 minutes, while at home we're developing personalised apps that transform daily life. The shift from passive tools to active agents represents a fundamental restructuring of Kiwi business. As development times collapse, product becomes commodity—experience and distribution are the new moats. Experts' call for governance frameworks suggest we're building the plane while flying it. The competitive advantage won't come from merely adopting AI (that's inevitable), but from implementing it ethically with frameworks that ensure these technologies address our unique cultural needs and perspectives.

AI POLICY

🌏 Trump's AI Blueprint: NZ's Tech Roadmap

📣 Word On The Street: MBIE specialist Sarah Box reveals how Trump's innovation-first AI approach could shape NZ's tech future after US fellowship.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Trump focuses on permissionless innovation, contrasting with Biden's safety-first approach.

• NZ electricity grid's 85% renewable status positions us well for sustainable AI growth.

• Box recommends NZ focus on three areas: AI development leveraging our unique data sets, AI adoption/application in businesses, and general AI literacy among the population.

🏘️ Our Take: While Silicon Valley throws billions at AI behemoths, Kiwi firms can win at the application layer (customer service bots, precision agriculture tools, healthcare diagnostics) rather than hardware (AI chips, data centres) and model layers (large language models like GPT-4). Part of that first step is the Government getting their house in order. This country needs an AI strategy to direct resources and create tailwinds for key industries. We also require regulation but not at the expense of over-regulation before the industry has a chance to breathe. This is critical to ensuring businesses can operate with confidence, balancing all perspectives and cultures.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🔌 Powering up NZ's digital future. Datagrid's NZ$3.5B Southland data centre will process 540 terabytes per second, setting foundations for NZ's AI capabilities by 2028.
3-min read.

🔍 Mind the gap. Despite massive investment, only 19% of Kiwi organisations are fully prepared for AI deployment. The growing divide between AI ambition and readiness threatens to undermine our competitive edge in the global digital economy due to capability shortages.
3-min read.

🚀 Kiwi AI speeds up market research. NZ startup Ideally has raised $6M to grow their AI-powered market research tool that turns months of work into overnight results, boosting our tech ecosystem in Australia and the US.
12-min listen.

🔒 AI giants raid Kiwi treasures. Meta scraped millions of books including works by kaituhi Māori (authors), exploiting cultural knowledge without consent or compensation. This digital colonisation highlights the failure of copyright laws in the age of Tech.
4-min read.

🛍️ What’s Left On The Shelf

• Vector’s AI-powered drones secure Auckland’s street lighting.
  2-min read.

• EY: 85% of Kiwis mistrust AI, only 28% see benefits vs 51% global.
  5-min read.

🦘 From Across the Ditch

🤖 Sporting AI fail. The Wallabies and South Sydney Rabbitohs angered fans by using ChatGPT to create Ghibli-style artwork instead of commissioning actual artists. The controversy extends beyond Australia, with major organisations like Six Nations also disabling comments after similar backlash to AI content.
4-min read.

🧠 CBA creates GenAI community. Commonwealth Bank is building an internal network to scale adoption of GenAI technologies. Their previous cloud upskilling trained over 7,000 banking staff, suggesting this new GenAI Network could impact Australia's financial AI landscape.
3-min read.

⚖️ Courts embrace AI cautiously. Australia's Federal Court has published its first AI Transparency Statement, revealing all AI use is limited to "workplace" applications. Their cautious approach prioritises data security while exploring how AI might improve operations without impacting judicial functions.
3-min read.

🏥 Aussies revolutionise radiology. Nearly $1M has been secured by Griffith University and Gold Coast Hospital to implement AI in radiology, marking the first such trial in Australia's public healthcare. The project aims to tackle the chronic shortage of radiologists causing dangerous diagnosis delays.
2-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

🤖 AI waiters serve London. LoveBite has launched the world's first AI "video waiter" in London restaurants, letting diners view dish videos and chat with a virtual assistant in any language. Customers spend 5-10% more when viewing digital menus.
1-min read.

🏝️ AI tourism for Rarotonga. 30 Rarotonga businesses now armed with AI marketing strategies that level the playing field against global booking giants positioning our Pacific neighbours as early adopters in the region.
3-min read.

🛰️ AI maps earthquake damage. Microsoft's AI for Good Lab combined satellite imagery with custom AI models to assess building damage after Myanmar's devastating 7.7 magnitude earthquake, identifying over 2,000 damaged structures.
2-min read.

💼 AI's double edge. The GenAI market exploded from $191M to $25.6B in just two years. This massive shift is creating a meaningful divide between those profiting from AI advancements and those threatened by them.
4-min read.

📖 In case you hadn't heard: "The Optimist" (release in May) reveals fresh details about the Sam Altman saga when he was dramatically ousted from OpenAI in 2023, promising unprecedented access to Silicon Valley's most dramatic power struggle.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

• OpenAI: Plans first open-weights model since GPT-2 and delays GPT-5 release amid overwhelming demand for image generation. Secures £40B funding while enabling ChatGPT integration with company databases.

• Meta: Unveils powerful new Llama 4 AI models that outperform rivals while using less computing power. Achieves breakthrough 10M context window.

• Google: Offers Gemini 2.5 Pro to free users with a million-token context window. NotebookLM adds Mind Maps to visualise complex information.

• Apple: Plans AI-powered Health app with personal coach for iOS 19.4 in 2026. Will analyse workout form via iPhone cameras and offer food guidance.

• Runway: Gen-4 video model solves AI's biggest problem - keeping characters consistent across scenes.

🔦 Kiwi AI in the Spotlight

Zeaware makes Enterprise AI deployment doable

I interviewed Tony Bain a few weeks ago and saw a demo of the Zeaware Avalon platform. Impressed by its simplicity and robust safeguards, with easy-to-navigate permissions and controls, here’s the lowdown:

• Australian-based Zeaware (with Kiwi-born CEO Tony Bain at the helm) has created something businesses genuinely need right now. Their Avalon platform helps ANZ companies push past the frustrating AI proof-of-concept stage and into actual production use.

• Avalon tackles the three biggest roadblocks head-on: quality concerns, governance uncertainty, and visibility issues. The platform connects with all major LLMs (Azure, AWS, OpenAI, Anthropic) and comes with built-in support for RAG, document processing, and secure API integration.

• "We focus on easy-to-adopt but high-impact use cases," Bain told me. Think private agents, document Q&A, and process automation.

• What makes them different is their local innovation and support. They're one of the few ANZ-built comprehensive AI platforms, without the requirement for massive specialist teams to get up and running.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

10 events taking place around Aotearoa this week (8 in person & 2 online). Get amongst them if you want to learn & trade ideas with other AI enthusiasts.

This week’s featured event - For the Women & the Allies 💃🏾

• Auckland - Accelerating Action with AI, 10 Apr: IBM TechWomen workshop exploring AI's potential to drive gender equity and workplace transformation. No cost.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

• Chapter Lead, AI - Air New Zealand, Auckland

• Machine Learning Engineer, 2025/2026 PHD Intern - Atlassian, Remote

• Automation Consultant - Planit, Wellington

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

Curiosity trumps technical skills every time when it comes to AI adoption. But, most professionals dismiss AI without even getting off the starting blocks.

👉 Watch my video breakdown of the 6 foundational principles for using AI.

🤦‍♂️ AI Fail Of The Week

We all love AI, but it’s certainly far from perfect…

That’s all for this week!

Email me here (or hit reply!) if you want to share any feedback, or let me know about a news story, event you’re hosting, or job you’re advertising.

Until next week,

👋 Mike