Sport NZ Maps AI Future

PLUS, IRD deploys AI tax enforcement

Author

Mike Bayly
July 21, 2025

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

We’re pausing The AI Corner jobs board. Many of you said the full list wasn’t adding enough value, so we’ll now feature just the three most interesting jobs each week. Get in touch if you’d like your job featured. 💼

Two creative AI examples from the week:

  1. An AI influencer named Mia Zelu fooled 165,000 followers with fake Wimbledon photos, proving digital humans are getting disturbingly convincing.

  2. We just came across the "Will Smith Eating Spaghetti test" – a real AI benchmark that started with a terrible 2023 video. It’s now used to gauge how realistic AI-generated videos have become, highlighting how far the tech has come. Check out Google’s latest Veo3 model putting it to the test 👇

Happy reading ✌️ (and listening, for that matter 🎙️)

Did someone forward you this? Sign up!

🚀 Become GenAI-Confident in 5 Hours.

Understand how AI works.
Learn to apply AI at work.
Sharpen your prompt skills.

Self-paced online study. Available to all. $129.

HEADLINE STORY

🏉 Sport NZ Maps AI Future

Screenshot from a report about the role of AI in sport and recreation

📣 Word On The Street: Sport New Zealand releases AI strategy with four scenarios and action plans, but lacks funding details or deadlines.

🔍 Zooming In:

  • Four scenarios mapped to 2035 - growth, collapse, discipline and transform - giving NZ Sport a strategic planning framework.

  • Immediate actions include staff training, AI audits, and small pilot projects within 6-12 months.

  • Covers talent ID through AI scouting, performance analytics, and fan engagement personalisation tools.

  • Barriers include cost concerns, data privacy issues, and confusion about practical AI applications.

🏘️ Our Take: This strategy provides excellent direction for AI adoption in sport but leaves organisations to figure out funding and technical implementation themselves. The document acknowledges what's already happening - elite sports are using AI while grassroots organisations get left behind. Without bridging this technology gap, we risk creating a two-tier system where well-funded sports dominate through AI advantages while community clubs struggle with outdated methods and declining participation.

The report's 10-year timeline feels leisurely when global competitors are implementing AI now and our own national sports organisations have been using it for years. While the emphasis on cultural authenticity is admirable, the strategy doesn't address how traditional approaches will compete against AI-optimised international rivals. We risk being culturally pure but competitively irrelevant, potentially seeing a brain drain as our best athletes / coaches / staff migrate to countries with better AI infrastructure and support when it comes to sport.

🏛️ Government & Policy

Inland Revenue deploys AI to revolutionise property tax enforcement. Advanced algorithms now cross-reference Landonline property databases (where property professionals and local councils can search for, lodge and update title dealings and survey data) with tax returns, automatically flagging bright-line violations and development activities. The system identifies associated party transfers and GST obligations across complex ownership structures.
4-min read.

  • Our take: This represents a massive leap in tax administration capability - what once required manual investigation is now automated pattern recognition. Other government agencies will likely adopt similar AI-powered compliance tools.

New tech institute targets AI and quantum computing breakthroughs. The Government's $231 million New Zealand Institute for Advanced Technology will prioritise emerging fields like synthetic biology alongside AI and quantum computing. Starting within MBIE in 2025, it becomes standalone in July 2026 with Auckland headquarters and research network across universities.
2-min read.

  • Our take: This represents a serious bet on frontier technologies beyond traditional agri-tech strengths - quantum computing and synthetic biology could position New Zealand as more than just an applications player. The institute structure suggests long-term commitment to competing in advanced technology development.

💼 Business & Industry

New Zealand's secret role in powering America's largest AI training facility revealed. Morrison-owned Fiberite Networks provides critical backbone infrastructure for OpenAI's Project Stargate in Texas, the world's biggest AI training centre. The 19,000-mile fibre network connects hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google across strategic US markets.
26-min watch.

  • Our take: While everyone focuses on flashy AI models, the real infrastructure play is in the physical networks that make training possible. Morrison's early bet on "boring" fiber optics is now essential to humanity's AI future. While experts say New Zealand should focus on AI applications, Morrison shows how capital can extend our reach into foundational infrastructure layers. Owning the pipes beats building on someone else's platform - we profit regardless of which AI applications win or lose.

NZ positioned as AI testing ground for Chinese tech. Chinese tech expert Dr Liang Zheng proposed NZ could provide "new potential scenarios" for adopting AI technology whilst China shares proven practices. The collaboration focuses on agriculture and tourism applications where both countries see mutual benefits.
3-min read.

  • Our take: Being China's AI sandbox could accelerate our own innovation whilst positioning NZ as a bridge between Eastern and Western tech approaches. Learning from China's AI success makes economic sense, but Kiwis will rightly question data sovereignty and surveillance implications. The challenge is capturing productivity benefits whilst maintaining our democratic values and privacy standards.

Straker targets Japan's $1.6 billion translation market with IBM-backed AI. The NZ translation company's founder pitched it’s new product, SwiftBridge AI to 28 Tokyo Stock Exchange firms during a recent visit. New regulations require over 1,600 Japanese listed companies to provide bilingual market disclosures, creating massive demand for AI translation services.
1-min read.

  • Our take: This showcases how Kiwi companies can capture value in AI applications by solving specific regulatory problems rather than building general-purpose tools - financial translation requires precision that generic tools can't deliver. Straker proves New Zealand can compete by building specialised AI rather than trying to match tech giants.

🎓 Education & Society

Kiwi students code flood warnings to save lives. UC engineering course teaches students to predict Mohaka River flooding using neural networks and real environmental data. Student Aparna Suseela says seeing her code forecast rising rivers made her realise AI's potential to "divert potential disasters" and support vulnerable communities.
2-min read.

  • Our take: This transforms how we protect communities from climate disasters. By training the next generation to blend engineering knowledge with AI, we're building homegrown expertise to safeguard lives as extreme weather intensifies.

⚖️ Legal & Ethics

Movie audience boos AI Russell Crowe video featuring botched Māori culture. Auckland's Hollywood Cinema screened a 10-minute AI-generated film of computer-generated Crowe as a medieval monk with offensive Māori representations. The 200-person audience shouted "make it stop" and booed throughout the screening before Wednesday's Friendship premiere.
3-min read.

  • Our take: This backlash reveals how AI's cultural blindness creates real harm when deployed without human oversight - the technology can't distinguish sacred cultural elements from generic imagery. Kiwi audiences won't tolerate AI content that disrespects indigenous culture, setting clear boundaries for creators. The technology needs diverse training data and human oversight, especially when depicting indigenous cultures that require nuanced understanding.

🎙️ Latest from The AI Corner podcast

This week’s guest is Stephen Morrison, a Gen AI leader at Fonterra transforming how 22,000 employees interact with AI.

Hear how Stephen drives real-world AI adoption at scale, why change management is “99% of the challenge,” and how experimenting with AI at home builds confidence in the workplace. He also shares insights on Microsoft Copilot rollouts, fixing broken processes before adding AI, and what New Zealand businesses must do to stay competitive in the AI era.

Listen on Spotify or YouTube 🎧

Subscribe to The AI Corner Podcast on Spotify and YouTube to be notified of new episodes.

🌍 The News from Global

💰 Trump lifts China restrictions. Nvidia wins approval to sell H20 AI chips to China after $5.5bn losses from export bans. Signals shifting US tech policy under Trump administration.
2-min read.

📉 AI adoption slashes hiring as UK job vacancies drop 43% from 1.3M to 0.7M since 2022. Software developers and IT roles hit hardest with 31% fewer job ads.
4-min read.

⚠️ AI terrorism wave coming warns UK advisor as chatbots create radicalisation loops for vulnerable individuals.
2-min read.

🌏 Tech Updates You Should Know

  • OpenAI: Delayed launch of its open-weight model due to additional safety testing; unveiled ChatGPT Agent Mode and checkout capabilities; secured $200M Pentagon contract; introduced a command-line coding tool (CLI Codex) and autonomous coding agent.

  • Google: Integrated Gemini AI into WearOS, and deeper into Android, raising privacy concerns; involved in a $200M Department of Defense AI contract for national security.

  • Microsoft: Announced Microsoft Elevate, a $4B initiative to train 20M people in AI skills over five years, despite laying off 15,000+ employees; expanded Azure AI Foundry with customisable AI agents and Copilot vision capabilities for screen understanding; partnered with OpenAI and Anthropic to fund a $23M National Academy for AI Instruction to train 400,000 teachers.

  • Meta: Offered $200M in total compensation to lure Apple’s top AI executive, Ruoming Pang, to its new Super Intelligence Labs; building a 5GW AI data centre in Louisiana; declined to join the EU’s voluntary Code of Practice for AI over legal uncertainties.

  • Amazon: Exploring a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic; collaborating with Meta on Llama AI initiatives.

  • Anthropic: Unveiled Claude for Financial Services with market data integration and automation for financial professionals; tightened usage limits on Claude Code AI, causing developer backlash; reportedly in talks with Apple to enhance Siri with a potential multi-billion-dollar partnership.

  • xAI: Released Grok 4 with advanced reasoning and enterprise-tier “SuperGrok Heavy”; faced backlash over antisemitic outputs, prompting safety prompt updates; integrating Grok into Tesla vehicles; received $2B investment from SpaceX as part of a larger $5B equity raise.

  • NVIDIA: Became the first public company to close a trading day at a $4T market cap.

📚️ Levelling Up With AI

1️⃣ The Agent Era Just Started
OpenAI’s new Agent Mode lets AI workers handle research, files, spreadsheets, and planning in parallel while showing you every step. This could be the start of managing fleets of AI agents.
1-min read.

2️⃣ Knowledge Work vs Wisdom Work
AI now does the busy work, leaving real value in wisdom work like asking the right questions and moving teams forward. Joe Hudson’s idea captures this shift perfectly.
1-min read.

3️⃣ Education’s Excel Moment
Treating AI as a threat in classrooms is as short-sighted as banning Excel 20 years ago. David Dempsey explains how to build AI into learning.
44-sec clip.

4️⃣ The AI Moat Playbook
AI is following the same open grow close playbook that Apple, Facebook and Google used to dominate. Brian Balfour shows how to stay ahead of the coming platform lock-in.
1-min read.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

We’re back in business with 14 AI events happening this week across the country.

This week’s featured event:

  • Genesys CX Tour, Thur - Wellington: Genesys brings AI-powered customer experience insights to Te Papa for CX leaders.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

Picklist of 🌶️ HOT 🌶️ new roles in AI this week.

💼  Want to promote your job to our engaged AI community? Reply to let us know.

🤦‍♂️ 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