NZ business optimism drives AI adoption

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

Five wild things in AI from this past week:

1. Meta is reportedly throwing $100M package incentives to poach OpenAI talent. Insane.

2. Base44, a vibe coding GenAI start-up, grew to 250k users and sold for $80M in just six months. Prepare for the real AI hype bubble.

3. AI-generated vlogs are spoofing Auckland life with hyper-realistic clips. One viral vid (218K views) shows a cop too busy vlogging to take a theft report. Link.

4. Two Chinese influencers made $7.65M in 7 hours using AI avatars -outperforming their real selves and reshaping livestreaming in China. Link.

5. Mike and team took out first place in an AI Agent hackathon hosted by Rochelle Moffitt from Revved, and Eoghan Neligan from Gravity.

Happy reading ✌️

This week’s highlights:

🔍 IRD's AI catches tax dodgers
🧠 MIT finds ChatGPT brain decline
🔄 22% of jobs created or cut by 2030
🚀 Kiwi VC firm flooded with AI pitches
🎓 Aussie schools prep for AI workforce
🩺 AI could solve 20% mental health gap
💭 Virtual romance becomes reality for Kiwis
🚁 Canterbury's AI chainsaw drone impresses
💼 Business optimism drives AI adoption surge

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BUSINESS SECTOR

💼 Business optimism drives AI adoption surge

📣 Word On The Street: NZ business confidence hits record highs as firms double down on AI for productivity gains this year.

🔍 Zooming In:

• 25% now see AI boosting productivity, up from just 17% last year with AI investment plans jumping 5 percentage points to 27%.

• Auckland businesses lead at 38% adoption, outpacing the national average.

• AI now ranks above IoT as the top productivity technology choice.

🏘️ Our Take: This productivity breakthrough shows businesses are moving past AI experimentation into meaningful implementation. There's a crucial difference between buying a few ChatGPT licences and transformative business integration that drives real competitive advantage. Genuine adopters will separate from those treating AI as a checkbox exercise with minimal software purchases.

Companies need to think big rather than nibbling around the edges to maintain their competitive positioning and avoid market share erosion. The data shows promise, but businesses must embrace comprehensive AI strategies when market dynamics shift this rapidly. While these numbers inspire confidence, more needs to be done across public discourse to reach a greater audience and increase discussion around what this means for the future of work and jobs for coming generations, arming them appropriately with the right skills.

HEALTH x AI

🩺 Minister claims AI could solve 20% mental health gap

📣 Word On The Street: Health Minister Matt Doocey sees AI therapy solving 20% of mental health gaps as Kiwis turn to tech for help while experts urge caution.

🔍 Zooming In:

• The Minister believes one in five unmet mental health cases could be handled by ChatGPT-style services.

• Clinical Psychologist Jaqui Maguire warns technology helps with decisions but risky during crisis intervention and can't build lasting therapeutic bonds.

• Jaqui comments that AI works as an excellent soundboarding tool and could potentially help with triaging low risk cases.

🏘️ Our Take: AI mental health support is about to get very real in New Zealand. It can also be expensive to access.

Thousands of Kiwis are stuck on waiting lists for mental health care right now. AI screening could fast-track access to support with clinicians backing up the technology. This beats people frantically googling symptoms or turning to social media for self-diagnosis. The tech offers solid first steps when you need them most - coping strategies and emotional validation available 24/7. Strong financial models could drive significant improvements in this technology right now. Better funding means better AI training, more accurate responses, and safer outcomes for everyone involved.

But here's where it gets tricky. AI can hallucinate. It might provide dodgy recommendations that aren't suitable solutions. Crisis situations need human intervention, not chatbot responses. Some mental health issues simply can't be solved by algorithms. Building real therapeutic relationships still requires the human touch for lasting recovery. People will resort to these tools anyway. Rather than fighting this reality, we can focus on education. Teaching people how to use these tools properly gets better results than pretending they don't exist.

The sweet spot lies in identifying when people are ready for practice mode versus needing immediate human support. AI can accelerate the screening process while humans handle the deeper therapeutic work. The technology works best as a bridge, not a replacement. Making these tools available with proper guidance beats leaving people to figure it out alone.

FORESTRY

🚁 Canterbury's AI chainsaw drone impresses industry

📣 Word On The Street: University team's eight-year project delivers AI-controlled cutting drone that can safely trim branches around live power lines without putting workers at risk.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Eight years of R&D culminates in safer power line maintenance without scaffolding or worker risk.

• Advanced AI algorithms calculate branch movement and wind patterns to prevent propeller damage.

• $10M MBIE funding supports commercialisation across arboriculture and infrastructure sectors.

🏘️ Our Take: This breakthrough puts us as world leaders in autonomous cutting technology whilst solving real workplace safety challenges. The innovation makes power line maintenance safer and faster, with cheaper infrastructure costs potentially flowing through to households. Our forestry sector gains access to steep terrain previously too dangerous for workers, potentially boosting export timber quality from previously inaccessible areas.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🔍 IRD's AI revolution catches tax dodgers. Inland Revenue's new systems processed 3 million returns in six months, uncovering $600 million in additional tax through 50% more audits than previous years across New Zealand.
5-min read.

💭 Virtual romance becomes reality for Kiwis. University of Auckland research shows 3% of students credit AI companions with preventing self-harm, but experts warn unregulated chatbots are teaching young people dangerous lessons about consent and boundaries without proper safeguards.
5-min read.

💼 AI creates more jobs than it kills. Kiwi business expert Wyn Ackroyd argues AI will unlock new employment categories like personalisation strategists, enabling thousands of bespoke customer products to be generated every hour.
2-min read.

🎓 AI Masters study surge hits Auckland University. Their AI masters programme exploded from 30 to 100 students in twelve months, with working professionals abandoning traditional careers to future-proof themselves against technological disruption
2-min read.

🌦️ AI becomes weather's new weapon. Traditional forecasting fails across NZ’s 1,600km weather battlefield, forcing MetService to embrace AI and high-resolution satellite tracking to predict our famously fickle conditions.
3-min read.

🦘 From Across the Ditch

🛡️ Trans-Tasman unions target AI workplace controls. Australian workers want legal right to refuse AI systems that could harm public interest or worker wellbeing, including medical decision-making roles. The ACTU's demands clash with business groups who warn against "heavy-handed regulatory responses" that could stifle AI adoption.
3-min read.

🎓 Aussie schools prep kids for AI workforce. UNSW partnership delivers free AI literacy to Years 1-10 with Google.org and Microsoft backing as 1.3 million Australian jobs face automation by 2030. The programme has already reached 100,000 students nationwide since launching in 2022.
3-min read.

🧪 AI slashes green ammonia experiments by 99.7%. UNSW cuts 8,000 potential catalyst tests to just 28, achieving sevenfold production increase at room temperature. The breakthrough enables container-sized ammonia production systems for farms, potentially disrupting the carbon-heavy Haber-Bosch process that generates 2% of global emissions.
3-min read.

💼 Australian grads face AI job squeeze. Youth unemployment hits 9.2% as entry-level roles disappear, with 50% of white-collar positions at risk within five years according to Anthropic's CEO. Major employers like Telstra and CBA warn their workforces will shrink as AI handles tasks previously assigned to junior staff.
4-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

🧠 MIT study reveals ChatGPT brain decline with users underperforming at neural, linguistic and behavioural levels during essay writing tasks. Students using AI tools showed weakened memory networks and bypassed deep learning processes, prompting calls for education policy changes.
5-min read.

⚔️ AI warfare goes mainstream as Israel-Iran conflict unleashes 100+ million fake video views across social platforms. Three AI-generated clips alone reached massive audiences, marking the first large-scale use of generative AI in military disinformation campaigns.
5-min read.

🌏 AI chip suitcase smuggling goes high-tech as Chinese engineers fly to Malaysia with 80 terabytes of AI training data across 15 hard drives. Southeast Asia's data centre capacity now matches Europe's largest markets at 2,000 megawatts, becoming the new battleground for AI chip restrictions.
2-min read.

🌊 AI could save lives in Tofino on Vancouver Island as Western University researchers test machine learning for tsunami warnings in tourist hotspots. The study found random forest algorithms beat traditional models by 15% for successful evacuations, crucial when 65-foot waves could hit Vancouver Island's $2B tourism infrastructure in 20 minutes.
3-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

• OpenAI: Launches “OpenAI for Government” with a $200M DoD contract to deploy AI across public agencies; Considers antitrust action against Microsoft over IP access and contract disputes tied to the Windsurf acquisition; Deprecates GPT-4.5 API, frustrating devs who relied on its stability; Publishes safety protocols for biosecurity as next-gen models approach.

• Google: Begins testing audio overviews in Search using Gemini to deliver spoken summaries with source links; Adds video upload and analysis features to the Gemini app; Launches Gemini 2.5 Flash and previews Flash-Lite - its fastest and cheapest models yet.

• Microsoft: Advertising watchdog flags its Copilot productivity claims, prompting changes to marketing disclosures; Plans major sales layoffs to shift resources toward AI infrastructure and data centres.

• Meta: Launches Oakley Meta smartglasses with integrated AI features, camera, and open-ear audio; Ends acquisition talks with Perplexity AI, shifting focus to internal tools and ecosystem plays; Introduces Llama Startup Program to support early-stage builders using Meta’s models.

• Amazon: CEO Andy Jassy warns corporate headcount will shrink due to generative AI efficiency gains; Encourages staff to embrace AI agent tools across teams.

• NVIDIA: Confirms humanoid robots, built with Foxconn, will begin deployment in US AI factories within 12 months as part of industrial AI rollout.

• SoftBank: Reveals $1 trillion plan to build “Project Crystal Land”—an AI and robotics hub in Arizona aimed at reshoring advanced tech manufacturing and rivalling Shenzhen.

• Midjourney: Launches V1 image-to-video tool on Discord, generating short video clips from static images.

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

1️⃣ The platform trap. Most businesses fall into two buckets: AI POC purgatory or ChatGPT tinkering. Neither moves the needle. The real unlock is adopting AI agents and rethinking long-term vendor loyalty.
🎧 51-sec clip.

2️⃣ The AI adoption gap. Australia is surging ahead with government, uni, and enterprise momentum. In NZ, innovation feels scattered. The AI Corner was built to spotlight what's under the radar.
🎧 75-sec clip.

3️⃣ The real risk is fake adoption. Ticking the ChatGPT box and calling it done is how you lose top talent to teams building what's next.
🎧 41-sec clip.

4️⃣ Culture at risk. Dr Karaitiana Taiuru warns: if Māori knowledge isn’t encoded and governed properly in AI, it risks being flattened or erased.
🎧 37-sec clip.

5️⃣ AI in the classroom. At Westlake Girls, AI is co-designing lessons, speeding feedback, and being governed locally rather than waiting on policy.
🎧 54-sec clip.

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📅 AI Events in New Zealand

 A humble 15 AI events dotted around the country this week — not too shabby for the depths of winter!

This week’s featured event:

• Genesys CX Tour, Deliver the next level of experience, Tue - Wellington Full-day event at Te Papa exploring AI automation for customer experience professionals and business leaders.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

• AI Portfolio Manager, NZ Post - Auckland

• Data Architect and AI Lead - The Co-operative Bank - Wellington

• Software Engineer - Croptide - Palmerston North

🤦‍♂️ AI Fail Of The Week

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

That’s all for this week!

Got news, events, or jobs? Hit reply - we love spotlighting what's happening across Aotearoa!

Until next week,

👋 Mike & Erin