Kia ora! Welcome to New Zealand’s weekly roundup of AI news, events, jobs and education.
Last week OpenAI shared data from 1.5m ChatGPT conversations between May 2024 and June 2025. It reflects how 700m people now use the tool each week.
The shift looks like this:
70% of use is non-work.
Coding is only 4.2% of prompts.
Writing support (28.1%) is mostly editing, not ghostwriting.
Information-seeking is growing quickly.
Role-play and emotional chats stay under 5%.
Growth is strongest among younger users and in lower-income regions.
What it shows:
ChatGPT is replacing friction, not jobs.
People use it to move faster and think more clearly.
Everyday use is now the norm.
It’s becoming a personal assistant for daily life.
Using AI has fast entered thinking tools becoming part of how we live. There’s significant shift in usage; early ChatGPT usage was 80% male. Now women outnumber men on ChatGPT. Report link.
On that note, we’re adding two new sections to the newsletter:
AI at Home: everyday ways to use AI outside the office.
Tip of the Week: quick tricks you can try in minutes.
This week’s highlights
🏢 Workplace culture drives AI adoption
🗣️ Waikato Uni builds iwi-specific Te Reo Māori AI
✋ Deaf Aotearoa challenges AI captioning tools
🐞 Roadkill bug DNA powers climate AI research
🦘 Possum genomes sequenced for AI-led pest control
🎙️ Mark Laurence on AI leadership (Podcast)
💼 The limits of what AI can teach beginners
⚠️ The Biggest AI Trap Leaders Will Fall Into
📝 Stop Building 50-Step AI Automations
🏡 AI at Home: Your 24/7 financial coach
Happy reading and listening ✌️
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HEADLINE STORY
💵 Government backs AI with $70M boost
Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Shane Reti.
📣 Word On The Street: Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology Shane Reti has unveiled a $70 million AI platform “to support innovative AI research and applications, develop world-class expertise, and sharpen New Zealand’s competitive edge”. The $70m forms part of the $231m allocated in Budget 2025 for the new Advanced Technology Institute.
🔎 Zooming In:
Funding flows through two-phase process with five ambitious projects receiving seed grants first.
Money comes from reshuffled research budgets, not fresh cash from Treasury coffers.
Applications open late October with partnerships between universities and industry required.
🏘️ Our Take: This is a pragmatic move rather than a flashy one. The government’s focus is on taking AI out of the lab and into sectors where NZ already has strengths (agriculture, biotech, and health) with the aim of creating higher-value jobs. By requiring university-industry partnerships, the funding is set up to deliver practical outcomes, not just academic research. The global partnerships (US, Singapore, Gulf, Canada) add extra weight, opening channels for export opportunities and collaboration. It’s a cautious but deliberate step to turn research into real economic value. The key will be ensuring investment targets AI commercialisation rather than blue-sky thinking.
🎓 Don’t just use AI. Lead with it.
Future-ready leaders don’t wait for change, they create it!
academyEX is a proud sponsor of this week’s edition of The AI Corner.
💼 Business & Industry
The companies with the strongest workplace cultures are crushing AI adoption. Key insight from the data: workplaces where staff trust leadership and feel supported adapting to change are outperforming on AI implementation.
3-min read.
Our take: The correlation makes sense. Culture beats technology every time - if your workplace doesn't feel safe to experiment, even the best AI tools will gather digital dust.
Radio NZ deploys AI to moderate 850,000 social media followers after manual monitoring became impossible. Kiwi startup Sence will scan hundreds of thousands of monthly comments 24/7, hiding harmful content instead of deleting it. RNZ staff can review decisions and focus on content creation rather than comment policing.
2-min read.
Our take: This signals a fundamental shift in how media companies operate. When even public broadcasters need AI to handle basic community management, we're seeing the early stages of AI becoming essential infrastructure rather than optional tech. Every major content business with a social presence will face this same scaling wall as the proliferation of agents interacting with posts increases.
💼 Education & Society
Waikato University just made history, creating the first AI that speaks Te Reo Māori in iwi-specific dialects. Led by Professor Te Taka Keegan, the breakthrough means each iwi can now build their own authentic voices, shifting AI from generic translations to true cultural guardianship.
2-min watch.
Auckland researcher built AI that predicts lung disease with 86% accuracy before symptoms appear. Dr Roan Zaied's machine learning model combines genetics, CT scans and clinical data to spot COPD years early. The system analysed 10,000 smokers over five years, identifying disease patterns invisible to traditional breathing tests.
5-min read.
Our take: This is precision medicine becoming reality. When AI can predict irreversible lung damage before it happens, we're looking at a fundamental shift from reactive to preventive healthcare. The cost savings alone could reshape how health systems operate globally.
Deaf Aotearoa just called out the tech industry for building AI tools without involving Deaf people. AI captioning and transcription tools lack NZSL accuracy and cultural context. Tech companies are treating accessibility as an afterthought rather than involving the Deaf community from day one in design decisions.
2-min read.
Our take: When AI development excludes entire communities, we risk digital colonisation of minority languages and cultures. As well as it being the right thing to do, this highlights a massive market opportunity tech companies are missing. When you exclude your target users from development, you build products nobody wants. Smart companies will start hiring Deaf consultants and researchers immediately.
Auckland scientists just turned roadkill into climate research gold with a $150,000 AI grant. Dr Richard O'Rorke's team will ask thousands of Kiwis to swab bug splatter from licence plates for DNA analysis. The data trains AI models to predict insect distribution changes and climate impacts across New Zealand's ecosystems.
3-min read.
Our take: This represents the democratisation of scientific research through crowdsourcing. When every car becomes a mobile research station, we can gather data at unprecedented scale and speed - exactly what climate science needs right now.
New Zealand researchers just sequenced possum genomes to develop species-specific elimination technology. University of Otago scientists are creating gene drives that produce male-only offspring, causing population collapse over generations. Combined with AI-powered trap cameras, the tech could revolutionise global invasive species control.
4-min read.
Our take: When conservation meets Silicon Valley efficiency - if AI can cut predator control costs whilst scaling nationwide, we're looking at a exportable conservation tech industry.
🎙️ The AI Corner podcast
This week’s guest is Mark Laurence, the Founder at Ten Past Tomorrow, Partner of AI Strategy at Icehouse, and AI Consultant at AUT.
Mark shares how NZ organisations can move from AI enthusiasm to real impact through senior leadership alignment, culture change, and strategic adoption. Learn why starting at the top matters and how to build a foundation for lasting transformation.
💡 Tip of the Week: instantly edit images with a voice prompt.
Brought to you by academyEX.
Google’s Nano Banana is one of the most powerful AI image editing models available 🍌. Nano Banana stands out for precision editing with natural language while keeping style and characters consistent, making visuals brand-safe and reusable. You can:
Change outfits
Swap angles or backgrounds
Add objects
Merge multiple shots into one seamless scene
Transfer styles between images, and
Edit step by step
How to use Nano Banana:
Head to https://gemini.google.com/ (sign up if required)
Select Tools
Select Create Images (this is Nano Banana)
Select the 2.5 Flash model
To add an image, click the + and then Upload files, such as your business logo or relevant imagery
Select the microphone to speak into your device to write your prompt
For a quick run-through, check out this clip of Mike showing Erin how it works.
📚️ AI for Business
Helping leaders and teams adapt, learn, and scale with AI.
1️⃣ Most companies think using AI means just adding it to old processes. For example, taking a manual report and ask ChatGPT to summarise it; plugging an AI email tool into Outlook to clear inboxes; adding an AI chatbot on top of a call centre. That’s like strapping a rocket to a train: faster, but still stuck on the same tracks. Businesses need to think from a different paradigm to move the P&L.
4-min read.
2️⃣ The limits of what AI can teach beginners. AI helps outsiders catch up until the wall appears. Harvard’s latest study shows exactly where expertise still matters most.
1-min read.
3️⃣ The Biggest AI Trap Leaders Will Fall Into. Leaders confuse AI convenience with transformation. The danger is that it feels like progress while limiting what’s possible.
3-min read.
4️⃣ AI = Retention, Not Redundancy. One firm slashed staff turnover by 30% from using AI tools. Proof that AI can keep people, not replace them.
60-sec watch.
5️⃣ Stop Building 50-Step AI Automations. AI isn’t about complex workflows that look impressive on a diagram but never get used. The real gains come from targeting the handful of steps that waste hours and stripping them back with AI. A social media workflow shows exactly how.
1-min read.
🏡 AI at Home
AI just became your 24/7 financial coach but there are some serious traps to avoid. Lisa Dudson from acumen.co.nz breaks down how Kiwis can use AI for personal finance without getting burned.
Ask complex KiwiSaver questions in plain English and get answers explained like you're 12 years old.
Upload three months of bank statements and ask AI to find 10% savings without touching essentials.
Run scenario planning on house deposits or holiday funds with different interest rates factored in.
Draft polite emails to negotiate lower credit card fees.
Summarise 40-page insurance policies into key points you actually understand.
Behaviours to follow:
Never paste login details into AI platforms.
Always specify New Zealand context.
Use closed environment settings when pasting personal data into LLMs.
🌍 Tech Updates From Global
OpenAI: Integrated GPT-5 Codex into ChatGPT, enabling 700M weekly users to write, debug, and refactor software; recalibrated Microsoft partnership reducing Microsoft’s revenue share from ~20% to 8% by 2030, unlocking ~$50B for compute-intensive AI development.
Google: Expanded Gemini Batch API to support embeddings and OpenAI SDK compatibility; launched VaultGemma with differential privacy for sensitive AI applications; rolled out ten Gemini-led AI features in Chrome, including autonomous task execution and webpage summarisation; introduced Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) for autonomous AI commerce with 60+ major financial partners and stablecoin support via Coinbase; launched AI-integrated Windows app combining local, cloud, and AI search; partnered with DeepMind for generative AI in YouTube Shorts.
Anthropic: Supported California’s AI safety bill SB 53; launched Claude’s file creation and management tools, enhancing productivity across documents; integrated Claude into Xcode 26 for app development assistance; released Claude Economic Index showing increased enterprise automation and coding as leading usage; internal benchmarks and Microsoft preference elevated Claude Sonnet 4 for coding tasks over OpenAI models; disclosed Claude’s strong enterprise growth in science and education; published postmortem on three infrastructure bugs and how they were resolved; faced backlash in Washington over potential surveillance use cases.
Microsoft: Integrated Claude into Copilot, dynamically routing Office tasks between Claude and ChatGPT; launched Copilot Chat for free in Microsoft 365 apps; invested $30B in UK AI infrastructure; partnered with Workday to integrate Copilot agents into enterprise systems for agent governance; added AI-powered agents to Teams and SharePoint for meeting summarisation.
Meta: Unveiled Ray-Ban Display smart glasses with integrated screen and Neural Band wrist gesture controller, despite demo glitches; negotiating with Reddit and major media firms for content licensing; Oracle in talks with Meta on $20B AI cloud deal.
xAI: Laid off 500+ generalist data annotators in pivot toward domain-specific AI tutors for Grok in medicine, finance, and science; rumored Tesla investment for Grok integration into vehicle platform.
Amazon: Launched 24/7 AI Seller Assistant automating inventory, compliance, and advertising; enhanced NFL broadcasts with Pocket Health and late-game prediction AI tools.
Apple: Robby Walker, head of AI and search, departed, raising concerns about Siri and search competitiveness; integrated Starlink tech into AI stack via Mode Mobile; no new model announcements but ongoing integration of Gemini into Siri for 2026.
Perplexity: Sued by Merriam-Webster for using Britannica content without authorisation; CEO teased shift to server-side agent model; Pro users can now sync email, calendar, Notion, and GitHub; Comet browser highlighted for workflow automation across Gmail and Google Drive.
NVIDIA: Announced $5B investment in Intel for co-developing AI data centre and PC chips; planning to deploy 120,000 AI chips in the UK by 2026.
📅 AI Events in New Zealand
19 AI events across the country this week.
This week’s featured event will double as a fun Friday night out!
The Great Debate 2025 - AI would design Auckland better than us!, Friday - Auckland: Six architects and engineers battle over whether AI beats human city design at Q Theatre.
📅 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 🤔 …
Check out the video of Meta’s demo video fail.
Meta's AI Live Demo Flopped. Link.
👋 Mike & Erin