AI Incidents New Zealand

A New Zealand media company published a Christmas book list for children in regional newspapers that included several non-existent book titles. Authors were listed with books they had not written. There was speculation that the incorrect titles might have been generated using artificial intelligence. The media company stated that the list was obtained from an external source. It withdrew the list and apologized for the error.

At New Zealand's most prestigious literary awards, the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, two books by well-known New Zealand female authors were disqualified because their book covers were created using artificial intelligence. The reason for this was a new rule that prohibits any use of AI in the entire book project, including cover design. The disqualification was made irrespective of the literary content, which was written entirely by humans. The decision was criticized because authors usually have no influence on the cover and the rule was introduced only after the books had been submitted. Following this public criticism and after further discussions, the organizers later reversed their decision and allowed the affected titles to re-enter the competition in 2026.

A simulated court hearing in New Zealand examined how artificial intelligence could function as the basis for criminal evidence. A real court and real lawyers were involved. The fictitious indictment was based on AI analysis of online data, with the defense criticizing the opaque ‘black box’ technology and the lack of scientific verification. The prosecution argued that the police and judiciary needed to use modern technologies. However, both the judge and the audience expressed clear doubts about the reliability of AI-based analysis. Ultimately, the trial left more questions than answers about the admissibility of AI evidence.

The New Zealand Employment Court addressed a procedural request by a plaintiff to extend a payment deadline and to admit additional documents. In doing so, the court pointed out that an earlier court decision cited by the plaintiff did not exist. It clarified that this was apparently the result of the uncritical use of generative AI and cautioned that AI-generated content should be carefully reviewed before being used in court proceedings.

Google's AI has repeatedly violated court-ordered name suppression in New Zealand. Search and AI response functions have disclosed the names of individuals subject to suppression orders.

The New Zealand Court of Appeal considered a complex international civil dispute involving allegations of fraud and the recognition and enforcement of foreign court judgments. The self-represented plaintiff filed pleading that were apparently generated using AI and cited fictitious court decisions. The Court emphasized that the use of AI does not displace the obligation to conduct careful legal review and that erroneous AI-generated content can significantly undermine the credibility of the party.

A Māori woman was mistakenly asked to leave a supermarket, which made her feel discriminated against. The supermarket chain was testing a facial recognition system in 25 stores to identify individuals who had been issued trespass notices following previous thefts. The supermarket apologized for the error and said it would report the incident to the data protection authority.

A bot belonging to the New Zealand supermarket chain Pak'nSave generates recipes for chlorine gas and other toxic meals.

During a terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand that killed 51 people, the perpetrator livestreamed his actions on Facebook. Facebook later stated that it uses AI to detect violent videos, but that it had not worked in this case. It is difficult to train AI for such rare events because, fortunately, there is a lack of training data. It is also challenging to distinguish real violence from visually similar content, such as video games. Therefore, user reports and human reviewers will remain important in the future.