Below is a Gen AI for Ethical use of Mātauranga template statement that can be copied and pasted for use in any educational facility, workplace or other organisation. Please be respectful of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License associated with this and acknowledge accordingly.
Māori data sovereignty and AI governance
Data is the source for all Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. XXXX (replace XXXX with your organisation name) recognises the need for Data Ontology and labels for Māori Data. XXXX (replace XXXX with your organisation name) recognises Māori Data is a Taonga and subject to Māori Data Governance as described by the Waitangi Tribunal in its WAI 2522 Report on the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) 2023 report:
Māori Data is:
“Digital or digitisable information or knowledge that is about or from Māori people, language, culture, resources, or environments”.
Māori Data Governance is:
“The principles, structures, accountability mechanisms, legal instruments, and policies through which Māori exercise control over Māori data”.
Internally, any AI associated with translating Te Reo Māori or generated multimedia must have the result confirmed by an staff member approved by our ethics committee Māori representative.
Any mātauranga Māori that is used to train a Generative AI (te reo Māori, images, pūrākau, etc) is done with permission from the traditional knowledge holder/author. We do not use prompts or other ontology to generate mātauranga Māori.
Knowledge that is considered tapu in te ao Māori is never used with a Generative AI. Tapu data includes but is not limited to:
1. Photos of the deceased, marae, carvings.
2. Whakapapa of individuals or collectives including pūrākau, waiata and whāikōrero.
3. Any data that is deemed tapu by the kaitiaki of the content of the data.
Any dispute of plagiarism will be assessed by the ethics committee Māori representative and/or kaitiaki of the topic.
Where AI generated material such as text, images, video etc, is used, it must be acknowledged.
The following information should be included when acknowledging the use of AI tools:
- AI tool (e.g. Chat-GPT, Copilot, Claude, Midjourney)
- A description of how you used the tool (e.g. brainstormed/corrected/edited/planned)
- Prompt(s) used
- Date.
Accurate as at the time of publication (July 23, 2025).