[audio[] https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2019036779/groups-take-legal-action-over-ai

The government is pushing for much more AI in the public service at a "pivotal" time for scores of lawsuits against AI globally.

Experts foresee a threat to the government's plans.

The free mining of copyrighted material has been used to train many AI large-language models.

The latest to push back are five big US publishers and bestselling author of Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow, against Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg.

In Germany recently, OpenAI lost in court, pinged over ChatGPT reproducing song lyrics.

In some cases Big Tech has won rulings that it is "fair use" to train AI this way.

Other cases remain undecided in what Reuters called a "pivotal year" for copyright battles.

Brandon Hutcheson, Hamilton-based director of quantum at AI data firm HSO sees problems for the government.

"There is a risk around that. I do agree with that," he told RNZ.

"If we're going about deploying those models and say that they do win the lawsuit and those models do get shut down ... then us having to go back and rethink."

'We'll get stung'

More likely Hutcheson thinks, is more licensing regimes will spring up to give authors and suchlike control - but that could be painful too.

"It will come down to an increase in licensing costs, and that's where we'll get stung."

Professor of Law at Victoria University Graeme Austin said the rush was fraught.

"It's interesting that it looks like we're moving in this direction, but at the same time there's litigation going on all the way around the world testing the legality of these products and services and broadly the ethics.

"And I think that's the question that we should be asking before we rush towards replacing workers with AI products and services," said Austin.

'Develop a marketplace'

Some New Zealand authors got compensated under a voluntary settlement by AI power Anthropic late last year over its use of book pirating websites.

However, NZ Society of Authors head Jenny Nagle said by email the public sector AI push was ignoring the risk "our government will indeed be paying subscriptions to international companies who are selling products ... that are part of international lawsuits".

Sam Irvine has been pushing for controls on AI training and on prompts, too, as head of Copyright Licensing NZ, though without much joy here.

Yet licensing was coming in other countries, such as in the UK where a mandatory regime was on the table.

"What I'd be recommending to the New Zealand public service is that they are looking to develop a marketplace for New Zealand creators so that we can have an internet where creativity is recognised and paid for," said Irvine.

"And they can do that. They are in a position to do that."

His group that is owned by publishers and writers was working on a licence so if someone referred to a copyrighted work in the prompt they put into an AI model, the creator would be recognised, and paid if they wanted to be.

"They need to be thinking about creating fair access and payment systems.

"There are things happening in the world that would say that we're moving towards more of the consent, credit and compensation."

The AI push was accompanied by word last week the government aims to cut 8700 public sector jobs in three years.

This week, a government delegation is at a briefing with Microsoft at its US headquarters where one of the subjects is the 'future of work'.

Along with private companies the delegation at Microsoft's headquarters includes public agencies such as the Financial Markets Authority, the NZ Super Fund and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), also Massey University, the Research Education and Advanced Network NZ, NZ Trade and Enterprise and the Environmental Protection Authority.

"Visits like this happen from time to time - typically around once a year - to ensure we stay informed about global developments and can make well informed decisions for New Zealand," said the Public Service Commission. "The visit is not linked to any specific announcement."

Swapping out AI

Brandon Hutcheson is part of the delegation to Microsoft, giving a presentation on quantum computing.

He said a smart AI rollout would protect the jobs of subject-matter experts and avoid getting too dependent on one big supplier. He had witnessed a change in the last five years to make the public sector's IT foundation - the "enterprise architecture" - much more able to swap-and-change.

"The entire architecture ... has shifted. So as long as things are architected properly from government, we will be able to switch those [AI] models out."

Microsoft has its products Copilot and Fabric widely spread across public agencies already, and is part of key contract frameworks.

However, Hutcheson said recently some agencies had shifted to Anthropic.

This showed they were not locked in - a much bigger weakness for regular-sized businesses, he said - so should be able to pick AI that would suit various functions.

He has plenty of ideas on this, laying out 160 AI intiatives "that could change the entire public sector" online recently.

He foresaw a time when lawsuits possibly had skittled some companies but there was a lot of choice for the public service in what was left.

"Let's imagine what this is like in three years, three out of the 10 [AI companies] may end up being shut down because they've illegally stolen stuff. Three of them may have created ... content compensation mechanisms that are in place that we could potentially ... switch it out into. There could be a few that have just completely ignored what everyone says in a jurisdiction we're not affected by."

Fears of pushback

In Australia, fears have been sparked that Big Tech might push back using investment dollars as leverage, at a time when Anthropic has come calling on the federal government.

Eighteen media organisations issued a joint statement this week: "Reports this week that government has indicated willingness to reopen copyright law as part of negotiations with AI companies seeking major investment commitments in Australia are deeply concerning.

"Organisations representing Australia's creative and content industries across the music, screen, literature, publishing, visual arts and news media sectors are sending a clear message to the Australian government: hold the line."

Irvine said on the data protection side, Australia was putting much more resource into this and New Zealand should tag along. "My hope would be, and certainly discussions I've had with officials would be that we would follow closely whatever Australia is doing."

Austin has written about countries like Japan and Singapore amending their copyright laws in the hope of attracting new AI business. In Europe, laws permit some forms of text and data mining.

He quoted a July 2025 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment report, "Fairly attributing and compensating creators and authors of copyright works can support continued creation, sharing, and availability of new works to support ongoing training and refinement of AI models and systems" and about respecting te reo, Māori imagery, tikanga and other mātauranga and Māori data.

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