NZ Police GenAI Approach

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

New research by 2degrees and Deloitte reveals a stark reality about our tech adoption.

• We're ranked 63rd out of 67 countries in productivity.

• Our R&D investment is just 1.4% compared to the OECD average of 2.7%.

• That's a $46 billion opportunity we're letting slip through our fingers.

• Meanwhile, our productivity growth has stalled at a mere 0.2% annually.

Why this matters:
Productivity
↳ Innovation
↳ Economic growth
↳ Higher living standards.

This chain reaction is the foundation of prosperity, but we're stuck at step one:

1. Digital skills shortages (training down 33% since 2010);

2. Our business culture is resistant to innovation; and

3. Regulatory friction and funding gaps.

The path forward according to the research:

• Reform R&D tax incentives for modern tech needs

• Remove start-up barriers and improve capital access

• Create innovation support services for SMEs

• Self-monitoring frameworks for digital capability

AI could supercharge this transformation - automating routine tasks, enhancing decisions, and shifting our workforce to higher-value activities. This will lead to a better quality of life in NZ, and provide resources to tackle climate change and our ageing population.

Before we get into the news…

Check out how AI is disrupting creative work—Leo Kadieff’s created a stunning Ghibli-style Lord of The Rings trailer remake by transforming, animating, and re-editing 102 original shots.

Highlights from this week’s edition:
🧝 LOTR Trailer Gets AI Makeover
💰 AI Is Key To NZ’s Future
🧠 NZ AI Community Seeks Help
👗 H&M's AI Replaces Real Models
⛏️ AI Discovers Gold Down Under
🛡️ AI Protection For Filmmakers

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NZ POLICE

🚨 Cops Draw AI Boundaries in Kiwi First

📣 Word On The Street: NZ Police unveiled strict guidelines for GenAI use, mandating human accountability and prohibiting automated decision-making.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Every AI tool requires superintendent-level ownership and regular effectiveness monitoring, with staff labelling all AI-generated content.

• All users must complete training before touching any GenAI tools, with misuse potentially breaching conduct codes.

• No court documents can use AI without prior judicial approval, limiting legal applications.

🏘️ Our Take: Police are cautiously deploying AI to streamline processes but remain mindful of potential biases, data privacy pitfalls, and tech overdependence—striking the right balance between smarter policing and protecting Kiwi rights. Transparent labelling of AI outputs should boost accountability, ensuring we know what's human versus tech-generated. Their frequent, six-month policy reviews mean Police stay agile as AI evolves, keeping oversight tight and public trust intact.

BANKING

🏦 ANZ Bank and Bud Power Smart AI Banking

📣 Word On The Street: ANZ's ongoing AI collaboration with Bud Financial continues to transform banking with smarter insights & streamlined operations.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Transaction categorisation technology gives customers crystal-clear visibility into spending patterns without manual sorting or spreadsheet skills.

• Natural language search tools let bank staff access complex customer data instantly, cutting service times and improving personalisation.

• Real-time data processing dramatically reduces waiting periods for lending decisions, particularly beneficial for business customers.

🏘️ Our Take: ANZ-Bud's AI partnership transforms banking through smarter financial pattern recognition. Kiwis gain clearer spending insights while businesses enjoy faster lending decisions. Yet concerns and risks do exist, which we aren’t clear on: customers have limited visibility into how their financial data is processed or shared between partners. AI lending algorithms may also reinforce existing biases and disadvantage certain demographics despite democratisation claims.

CREATIVE SECTOR

🛡️ Creative Sector Tackles AI's Double-Edged Sword

📣 Word On The Street: As Meta steals Kiwi authors' work for AI training, the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) releases protective guidelines for filmmakers—showing NZ's creative sectors are at a crucial turning point.

🔍 Zooming In:

• Tech giant Meta caught training AI on 211,946+ books without permission, including countless Kiwi works now being tallied by the New Zealand Society of Authors.

• NZFC's new AI principles prioritise Te Tiriti obligations and human creativity, directly addressing concerns raised by the LibGen scandal.

• Writers Guild's AI Handbook launches alongside NZFC guidelines, creating a united front across creative sectors against exploitation.

🏘️ Our Take: This moment exposes the stark choice facing our creative industries: proactive protection or reactive scrambling. The film sector's coordinated approach offers what our literary world desperately needs - clear principles balancing cultural integrity with innovation potential. While filmmakers receive human-centred frameworks, authors chase after already-stolen works. This contrast demonstrates why comprehensive cross-sector regulation matters. The NZFC guidelines aren't perfect - they're voluntary, will need constant updates, and lack enforcement teeth. Plus, could stricter protections put Kiwi filmmakers at a competitive disadvantage? Despite these challenges, the screen industry's blueprint - prioritising Te Tiriti obligations alongside practical implementation - provides our first real defence against the exploitation seen with Meta's massive book theft.

🥝 Other Kiwi Bites

🍽️ Food safety goes AI. Food Standards Australia New Zealand unveils ‘lite’ transparency statement for Govt AI usage, affecting both Kiwi and Aussie food standards. The trans-Tasman regulator's guide means faster, more efficient safety processes.
1-min read.

🎼 Classical composition AI upgrade. University of Auckland's Dr Chisholm transforms AI-generated music into orchestra notes, performed by Akl Philharmonia. This creative experiment questions authorship while showcasing innovation.
2-min read.

🧠 NZ shares AI know-how with Thailand. Wintec delivers two-week AI immersion for 10 Thai vocational students, featuring design thinking workshops and Gallagher industry visit. The collaboration strengthens both countries' tech ecosystems.
3-min read.

🚗 Crash response tech crosses the ditch. RACV-owned Intelematics launches eCall in NZ, allowing automatic emergency calls after accidents and potentially transforming road safety outcomes for the 300+ Kiwis lost annually on our roads.
2-min read.

🛍️ What’s Left On The Shelf

• Sovereign AI community hits 60 members, seeks skilled volunteers.
  Link.

• AI Forum NZ creates HR Working Group to future-proof Kiwi workforces.
  Link.

• Kiwi AI Experts wanted for South Korean tech exchange in May.
  Link.

🦘 From Across the Ditch

🚨 AI tackles road dangers. Aussie tech company Acusensus has secured a NZ$92 million contract with NZTA to deploy AI-powered safety cameras nationwide, marking our biggest investment in road safety tech.
3-min read.

💻 CommBank's global AI expedition. Australia's banking giant has established a Seattle Tech Hub where their tech teams participate in three-week programmes with industry leaders like AWS and Anthropic with the aim to accelerate AI adoption.
2-min read.

🔬 Breath-taking innovation. Aussie researchers at UNSW Sydney have developed an AI-powered breath test that detects silicosis (a lung disease) in minutes with over 90% accuracy, transforming early diagnosis for at-risk workers.
3-min read.

🏛️ Sydney Opera House plays it safe with AI. Australia's iconic venue takes a risk-based approach after five-year digital transformation. CFO blocks ChatGPT access to keep their data on home turf.
2-min read.

⛏️ Six Aussie mineral finds. Earth AI has unveiled six new mineral prospects in Australia with significant concentrations of tungsten, cobalt, and gold.
1-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

🔄 H&M creates AI model replicas. The fashion retailer is developing AI-generated "twins" of 30 models for marketing, promising ownership rights & compensation.
2-min read.

🧠 Gates goes all-in on AI. The Microsoft co-founder believes AI will make human expertise in medicine and education largely obsolete in under 10 years, with AI delivering expert medical advice and tutoring for free.
2-min read.

🔒 Advanced AI chips face global restrictions. The US has categorised countries into three tiers for AI chip access, with NZ landing in the privileged Tier 1 group. This three-tier framework will reshape the global AI landscape.
3-min read.

🔄 UK Stalls AI Safety. UK government reportedly delaying AI Safety Bill to align with Trump administration's anti-regulation stance. A Microsoft report suggests limiting AI innovation could cost the UK over £150 billion.
2-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

• OpenAI: Adopts Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) across all products including ChatGPT desktop app, whilst releasing GPT-4o Image Gen, a revolutionary auto-regressive image model that creates Studio Ghibli-style images and transfers styles between images; all whilst closing a record-breaking $40B funding round that nearly doubles its valuation to $300B.

• Google: Launches Gemini 2.5 Pro experimental model topping LMSYS benchmark charts with impressive zero-shot coding capabilities and a 1M token context window (expanding to 2M), alongside introducing AI travel planning features across Search, Maps and Gemini.

• Anthropic: Finally adds real-time web search capabilities to Claude after lagging behind competitors for years, allowing paid US users to access current information rather than relying solely on outdated training data.

• DeepSeek: Quietly shipped V3-0324 model with 5-20% benchmark gains over December release, bringing its massive 685 billion parameter LLM within striking distance of GPT-4.5 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

A whopping 16 events taking place around Aotearoa this week (13 in-person & 3 virtual). Get amongst them if you want to learn & trade ideas with other AI enthusiasts.

This week’s featured event - see you there!

• Auckland - AI Forum NZ Launch Productivity Report #2, 31 Mar: Kiwi tech leaders reveal groundbreaking research on AI's productivity boost across NZ industries. Join Megan Tapsell and AWS experts for exclusive insight.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ roles in AI.

• Senior Automation Specialist - Air New Zealand, Auckland

• AI Digital Marketing Manager, Remote

• Data Scientist - Ravensdown Ltd, Christchurch

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

OpenAI’s GPT-4o stormed the internet this week with new image generation capabilities that have raised the bar dramatically.

Here's what's happened:

1️⃣ Image generation: ChatGPT now creates GREAT images directly within your chat.
2️⃣ Streamlined workflow: Simply type what you want, get a polished image back.
3️⃣ Text clarity: Generated images finally feature readable, coherent text.
4️⃣ Wide availability: Free, Plus, Pro and Team users can access it now.

What's likely coming next:

⚠️ Social feeds will soon overflow with AI-generated anime pics
⚠️ Copyright battles loom large as we enter murky legal territory
⚠️ Brand content creation will transform rapidly, pushing designers to innovate

The pattern continues: text was conquered first, images second, and video transformation awaits just around the corner.

👉 Watch this 60-sec clip on how I used the tool for three use cases.

🤦‍♂️ 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