Air NZ’s 1,500 Custom GPTs Take Flight

PLUS, Govt Invests $24M in AI & Biotech

Author

Mike Bayly
July 28, 2025

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

Two announcements:

  1. Come Build With Me is kicking off next week. We’re giving the AI builders in NZ a platform to showcase what they’re building with AI — from coded apps to automation workflows, AI assistants, and no/low-code agents. Let us know if you’ve got something cool to share.

  2. AI Corner Event. We’re hosting our first event to bring NZ’s AI community together and spotlight the leaders shaping the future. If you missed Wednesday’s note, we’d love your input into the event dynamics and to let us know if you’re keen to join.👇

Must watch: Easily this week’s most viral video, the “exploding IKEA room box” ad by Salma Aboukarr, created with Google’s AI Video Generator, Veo 3. Racking up over 1.3M views.

This week’s highlights:

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HEADLINE STORY

✈️ Air NZ Partners with OpenAI

AirNZ plane in the sky

AirNZ and OpenAI have signed a strategic partnership agreement.

📣 Word On The Street: Our national carrier joins elite global group to co-create AI solutions with ChatGPT's makers.

🔍 Zooming In:

  • 3,500 corporate staff now use ChatGPT Enterprise to speed up internal workflows daily.

  • 1,500 custom GPTs already built to tackle airline-specific operational challenges.

  • First-ever OpenAI partnership in NZ gives early access to cutting-edge AI tools weekly.

🏘️ Our Take: Air New Zealand just joined an elite global group of airlines revolutionising aviation through AI. The collaboration promises to make Air NZ more efficient and cost-effective, benefiting travellers through better on-time performance and smarter pricing. But here's the kicker: Air NZ isn't just using AI - they're co-creating solutions with OpenAI's engineering teams to solve airline problems worldwide.

With 1,500 custom GPTs already built and weekly access to cutting-edge tools, Air NZ is becoming a testing ground for aviation AI innovation. Any breakthrough solutions they develop could be commercialised globally, creating new revenue streams and establishing NZ as an aviation AI hub.

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🏛️ Government & Policy

Government drops $24M on AI and biotech to future-proof Kiwi economy. Seven joint research projects with Singapore will tackle healthy ageing and sustainable food production over three years. The AI programme targets dementia risk assessment and cognitive health monitoring whilst biotech focuses on algae-based foods and hybrid meat production.
2-min read.

  • Our take: This strategic partnership positions New Zealand as a regional innovation hub whilst building commercial pathways for emerging technologies. The collaboration with Singapore's advanced AI capabilities could accelerate time-to-market for Kiwi health tech startups.

Politicians are using AI to read your submissions - and it's sparking a democratic crisis. Parliament processed 300,000 submissions on the Treaty Principles Bill using AI whilst local councils like Nelson are letting algorithms analyse public feedback on long-term plans. The Regulatory Standards Bill used AI to classify 22,821 submissions as supporting, opposing, or unclear on their stance.
7-min read.

  • Our take: This efficiency gain comes with a legitimacy cost. When citizens invest time crafting submissions only to have computers process them, trust in democratic participation erodes. The resource savings may not justify the democratic deficit.

💼 Business & Industry

Waikato farmer cuts bull selection from a month to under a minute using AI. Matthew Zonderop's Perfect Cow Breeding Solutions launched at Fieldays, replacing spreadsheets with ChatGPT to match 27,000 bulls to individual cows. His system processes breeding data for 380-cow herds instantly, selecting optimal genetics for peak milk production and sustainable profits.
3-min read.

  • Our take: This is precision agriculture meeting consumer AI - when farmers can optimise breeding decisions in seconds rather than weeks, we're looking at serious productivity gains across NZ's $7.8B dairy sector.

A Kiwi startup just cracked the $8.2B medical imaging problem with a $30 solution. Christchurch-based Nexture built TheraSeus, an AI platform that reads capsule endoscopy images for just $30 per report. Competing solutions cost over $50,000 with hefty monthly subscriptions. Founder Wei Sun spent 25 years in healthcare tech before moving to New Zealand to solve physician burnout. Doctors currently spend hours manually reviewing 50,000 images per patient case. TheraSeus filters out normal images and highlights suspicious lesions in minutes.
5-min read.

  • Our take: This hardware-agnostic approach could democratise medical AI globally. By working with existing systems rather than requiring expensive upgrades, Nexture removes the biggest barrier to AI adoption in healthcare.

SMEs are crushing larger firms in AI adoption confidence. 72% of small business workers rate themselves as intermediate or advanced AI users. Only 13% of all Kiwi workers receive company-led AI training despite widespread adoption.
3-min read.

  • Our take: The confidence gap is telling - lean SME teams are grabbing AI efficiencies while corporates overthink strategy. This could reshape competitive advantage across industries.

🎓 Education & Society

Kiwi researchers lead AI revolution in scientific fraud detection. Victoria University researchers warn that AI systems are already scanning millions of research figures for fraud and manipulation. The technology will soon enable a comprehensive global audit of scholarly work, potentially revealing widespread low-quality research alongside outright fraud.
5-min read.

  • Our take: This could trigger a massive shift in how businesses evaluate scientific evidence for product development and policy decisions. Companies relying on research for competitive advantage need to prepare for a world where AI separates genuine breakthroughs from academic fill.

Auckland schools are outsourcing student thinking to ChatGPT, creating a generation who can't write without bots. A local tutor reveals 60% of local International students now use AI for schoolwork whilst university students admit feeling "dumb" from AI reliance. Auckland classrooms are prioritising efficiency over original thought, with 12-year-olds questioning why they need to learn spelling when Google Docs fixes everything.
5-min read.

  • Our take: The workforce pipeline is filling with graduates who can't think independently or communicate authentically. Businesses hiring these students may find polished CVs hiding fundamental skill gaps in problem-solving and creative expression. New Zealand's education system risks mimicking the rigid, compliance-focused approaches that stifle creativity overseas.

🎙️ Latest from The AI Corner podcast

This week’s guest is Heath Waugh, founder of Matter Studio, New Zealand’s first AI-powered product photography studio.

Hear how Heath is reinventing product imagery by merging 20 years of commercial photography with generative AI, why hybrid workflows slash shoot costs by up to 30%, and how brands can scale visual content without compromising quality. He also shares why furniture and homeware brands are leading the AI photography wave.

Listen on Spotify or YouTube 🎧

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📚️ Levelling Up With AI

1️⃣ Vibe Coding Can Lift NZ Productivity
Lovable hit $100M in eight months by letting anyone build apps with natural language. For NZ, vibe coding is a chance to close the productivity gap - custom tools built in hours, no dev team needed.
4-min read.

2️⃣ ChatGPT’s Agent Mode Hits and Misses
OpenAI’s Agent Mode nailed my request to make a restaurant booking but stumbled when asked to review inbox content and build a carousel in Canva. It shines with simple tasks, but true multi-agent toolchains still feel a few steps away.

3️⃣ Avoid the AI “Copy-Paste Tax” Loop
Most of us still bleed time on micro-tasks like copying ChatGPT outputs, pasting, editing, and repeating. Small shortcuts like “Ask ChatGPT” kill this loop and save minutes that add up fast.
1-min read.

4️⃣ What Workers Want From AI
A new Stanford study maps how workers want AI to help. Most prefer AI as a partner (not a replacement), using frameworks like the Human Agency Scale and Traffic Light Zones to show where AI adds real value.
1-min read.

5️⃣ AI Adoption Is 99% Change Management
The biggest barrier isn’t the tech - it’s us. Habits don’t break overnight, but experimenting with AI at home is the first step to embedding it in the workplace.
65-sec clip.

6️⃣ Rethinking AI Tasks
Instead of asking “How can AI do my tasks faster?” the real question is “Do these tasks even need to exist?”. Agentic AI replaces workflows, not just speeds them up.
3-min read.

🌍 The News from Global

The Trump administration unveiled "America's AI Action Plan", marking what the Wall Street Journal calls "Liberation Day for American AI." This ambitious blueprint prioritises speed over safety and positions AI as a strategic battleground for digital dominance. Key points below:
4-min read.

  1. AI Supremacy Over Parity: America pushes for total AI dominance, framing it as an arms race.

  2. Deregulation Replaces Governance: Safety rules are stripped back to speed up innovation.

  3. Free Speech as Design Principle: Federal AI must be “objective” and free from DEI or climate criteria.

  4. Open-Weight AI Priority: Open-source models get strategic backing over closed systems.

  5. Worker Retraining Over Protection: Displaced workers get reskilling incentives instead of job shields.

  6. Infrastructure as National Priority: Power, chips, and data centres take precedence over models.

  7. Military AI Deployment: Defence fast-tracks AI with classified testing and talent pipelines.

  8. Legal System AI Adaptation: Courts adopt new tools to verify digital evidence and deepfakes.

  9. Semiconductor Export Controls: Chip exports tighten to safeguard U.S. tech advantage.

  10. Global Tech Expansion: America exports AI standards to allies while sidelining China.

Tech Updates You Should Know

  • OpenAI: Pledged $50M to support nonprofits using AI for social impact; announced plans to bring over 1M GPUs online by year-end; signed EU's AI Code of Practice commitment; formed UK government partnership to accelerate AI adoption; finalised $30B Oracle data centre deal for Project Stargate; leveraging Google's infrastructure for model training due to Microsoft GPU capacity limits; ChatGPT users now sending 2.5B daily prompts; gearing up for GPT-5 release as early as August with breakthrough reasoning capabilities; claimed gold medal score at International Mathematical Olympiad using unnamed model.

  • Google: Launched Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite as cost-effective production model; added AI photo remix features and photo-to-video conversion in Google Photos; launched Opal experimental tool for creating AI mini-apps through natural language; achieved gold medal performance at International Mathematical Olympiad.

  • Microsoft: Now blocking Cursor from accessing 60,000+ VSCode extensions; evaluating employees based on internal AI tool utilisation; attracted over 20 AI engineers from Google DeepMind; rolling out new AI-powered Windows 11 tools including Copilot Vision for screen analysis.

  • Meta: Refused to sign EU's AI Code of Practice citing legal uncertainties; reportedly shifting away from open-source models toward closed development; 40% of team reportedly consists of former OpenAI staff.

  • Amazon: CEO Andy Jassy requiring managers to show AI efficiency gains; acquired AI wearables startup Bee for conversation recording and transcription; collaborating with Meta on Llama AI initiatives.

  • Anthropic: Facing billion-dollar class action lawsuit over copyright infringement allegations; launched domain-specific AI tools for financial analysts; researchers part of 40+ coalition raising concerns about AI monitoring as chain-of-thought reasoning may become unreliable.

  • xAI: Announced "Baby Grok" child-friendly chatbot following backlash over customisable companions; seeking perpetual employee face data access for AI training; aims to build AI infrastructure equivalent to 50M NVIDIA GPUs by 2025.

📅 AI Events in New Zealand

We’re back in business with 17 AI events happening this week across the country.

This week’s featured event:

📅  Promote your event with us. Reply to let us know.

💼  AI Roles Around Aotearoa

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

💼  Promote your job with us. Reply to let us know.

️ AI Fail Of The Week

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

👋 Mike & Erin