Dr Karaitiana Taiuru regularly composes blog posts on topics relating to Māori and Artificial Intelligence, Data Sovereignty, Safety, Cultural Appropriation and other related topics. Please subscribe to the RSS feed http://www.taiuru.co.nz/rss to keep up to date.
All posts
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Principles for Digital Identity
Introduction Digital identity in New Zealand (DIiNZ) must recognise that Māori identity is not only an attribute of an individual account, but also relational, collective, and grounded in whakapapa, whānau, hapū, iwi, whenua and other traditional collective identity mechanisms. Most…
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Social Licence and Te Tiriti o Waitangi
What is a social licence? A social licence to operate (SLO) is the ongoing acceptance or approval that an organisation receives from communities and other groups affected by its activities. It is different from formal legal permission. A social licence…
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NZ racist AI generated ad
Voyager Broadband‘s (Actrix Networks, 1st Domains / Affordable Domains / Register Direct) latest advertisement (via RNZ) shows two Māori/Pacific men, one of whom is attacking a Pākehā man by having him in a chocker hold on the floor, after their…
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Māori led framework for data centre development
This article explores a proposed Māori led framework for datacentre development. Using a Māori owned and developed framework using environmental protections that are interwoven in tikanga Māori that respect and utilise the New Zealand environment. It argues that by doing…
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Māori Data Sovereignty preferences in GenAI
This post analyses public preferences of the use of GenAI in the policy decision-making process across New Zealand and compares non-New Zealand Māori to other New Zealand’s preferences. The methodology is at the end of the article. Public preferences of…
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Tikanga Māori with Smart glasses
There is an urgent need for marae to implement new kawa and tikanga to protect the people form anonymously being AI’s training data. Camera glasses (pervert glasses) now sold at Kmart for ninety-nine dollars, and other more expensive glasses with…
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Record of stolen Māori Knowledge by AI
My ongoing investigation of scraped and stolen Māori knowledge by AI has identified more than 80 Māori authors, 8 non Māori kaupapa Māori authors (194 plus titles) and song artists; 100’s of videos from Te Karere TVNZ and Marae TV…
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Māori Data Sovereignty Operationalised with Google Maps
This week Google Maps began rolling out a New Zealand voice that pronounces te reo Māori place names correctly. Place name Whangārei with the soft “f” sound from an New Zealand dialect, Taupō with the long vowel, Karangahape Road spoken…
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Deep fake harms real scenario and new legislation
Too often in New Zealand, AI safety folk (who usually have a high level of privilege or are detached from vulnerable communities), will reference international AI stories highlighting harms while being oblivious to local harm stories. This is important from…
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Tikanga AI images of a person
A New Zealand model Elijah Timmins-Scanlon alleges streetwear brand Huffer is generating models with AI, using the likeness of models from previous Huffer campaigns, without disclosure. Shockingly, On 6 June, Huffer wrote to him demanding he “immediately remove, or amend”…
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Māori Data Sovereignty and the Fragility of Borrowed AI
Anthropic the company behind the Claude AI received with no warning or explanation, a directive directing them to immediately suspend access to their Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models for all foreign nationals in America and all non-Americans on the…
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Human Oversight in Automated Decision Making
The New Zealand media continue to report on AI harms from a western, academic, middle-class perspective while continuing to make invisible communities silent and ignored. This is a te ao Māori perspective of the recent MSD automated Decision Making law…
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Ministry’s AI Guidance- wrong Māori advise
The Ministry for Regulation’s Responsible AI in Action guidance (May 2026) represents a credible foundation for regulators engaging with Artificial Intelligence. However, the guidance contains a significant and consequential gap: its treatment of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Māori data…
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NZ FTA with India – dangers for Māori
In 1907, the New Zealand Government passed an Act with a single purpose: to suppress tohunga and the traditional Māori knowledge and beliefs they held. It was not repealed until 1962. This was in addition to the Natives Schools Act,…
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Replacing public servants with AI – costs to Māori
The current coalition government has announced the elimination of approximately 8,700 public sector positions or 14% of the public workforce alongside NZ$2.4 billion in spending reductions over three years, with AI deployed as the replacement mechanism. The PSA has been…
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Māori Privacy Survey Findings
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s 2026 survey on privacy concerns and the use of personal information tells a story that New Zealand policymakers, technologists, and public institutions would do well to read carefully. More than half of all New…
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AI Agents and Legal Personhood in New Zealand
In this article I extend my earlier analysis of Māori cultural perspectives on AI sentience and legal personhood to the specific and urgent case of agentic AI systems, those capable of autonomous, persistent, goal directed action across digital environments. I…
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Google DeepMind hires ‘philosopher’
As AI systems grow more capable, companies appear increasingly willing to look beyond traditional engineering disciplines for guidance on questions that touch on consciousness, identity and what it means to interact meaningfully with a machine. On 13 April 2026, Google…
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Personal Māori Data Sovereignty
I am often asked by individuals how they can better implement Data and Digital Sovereignty in their home and whānau lives. Here are some immediate steps you can take that will protect your privacy and save you money. Primary audience…
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Mana Without Mātauranga – Digital Ethics
There is a pattern in New Zealand’s AI and data governance landscape that is rarely named directly, but it is immediately recognisable to anyone who has worked in this space. When organisations, government agencies, technology companies, universities, and research institutions…
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Human Resilience with AI
I was honoured to be one of the 386 international AI ethics experts to contribute a short essay to the “Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI: Experts Call for Radical Change Across Institutions, Social Structures” report…
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AI Bias with Māori in Job Interviews
The past few days we are hearing about AI and recruitment issues with you a young man who faced bias. I am increasingly concerned that the media is not giving Māori any consideration with their AI bias stories, relying on…
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Meta’s Digital Ghost Patent
Meta’s Digital Ghost Patent: A Te Ao Māori Analysis IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR FACEBOOK AND META USERS On 30 December 2025, Meta was granted a United States patent that would allow its platforms to use Artificial Intelligence to construct a digital…
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Iran War and Data Sovereignty in New Zealand
For millennia, combatants have sought to cripple adversaries by destroying the infrastructure that sustains them, poisoning wells, burning bridges, bombing railways and oil refineries. In the war now engulfing the Middle East, data centres have emerged as a new category…