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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Māori and the Harmful Digital Communications Act
Māori are over-represented among people prosecuted and convicted under the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015. Across the ten years from 2016/17 to 2025/26, Māori made up 22.2% of people with finalised charges and 23.8% of people convicted, against 17.8% of…
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Māori as targets of online abuse
Māori experience more online harm than other New Zealanders, and it is getting more serious. In Netsafe’s 2025 survey, 48% of Māori received unwanted digital communications in the past year, against 38% of all New Zealanders. Of those Māori, 52%…
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AI Bias, Māori Data Sovereignty & AI Governance Glossary
This glossary provides plain-language definitions of key terms in Māori data sovereignty, data residency, AI governance, AI bias, algorithmic lookism, and facial recognition technology (FRT) bias in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is informed by the Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 2252 report…
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Indigenous Legal Knowledge and the Future of Legal Scholarship
This is a copy of a post I wrote for Verfassungsblog Symposium in the series Thinking Machines, Thinking Lawyers. The title is “What AI Cannot See; Indigenous Legal Knowledge and the Future of Legal Scholarship”. The original article and credits…
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Tikanga Māori perspective of the Internet
Karaitiana N Taiuru · 17 April 2015 These two presentations were first presented by Karaitiana Taiuru to the Open Source/Open Society 2015 conference (Indigenous break out session) in Wellington on April 17 2015. N Part 1: The Internet infrastructure and…
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Macrons in Domain Names: History and a Practical Guide to IDNs in .nz (2006–2026)
Māori Macrons in Domain Names: The History and a Practical Guide to IDNs in .nz (2006–2026) By Dr Karaitiana Taiuru. Consolidated on 10 October 2026 from twelve posts first published between 28 April 2006 and 31 December 2023. Original publication…
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NZ media coverage of AI and Māori
Māori are named in only about a third of New Zealand news stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Māori are talked about, but rarely heard. When you count who is quoted, Māori technology, rights and data sovereignty voices make up just…
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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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Govt AI Framework
CASE STUDY –The need for Māori Expertise in AI Governance and Policy and Frameworks. In May 2026 the Ministry for Regulation published guidance on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in regulatory practice Practical steps for regulators leading AI innovation…
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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 advice
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…