Ministry for Culture and Heritage officials have said there are challenges around how to protect cultural intellectual property as AI advances. Photo / 123rf
Government agencies are warning about potential challenges around cultural aspects of artificial intelligence.
Ministry of Māori Development Te Puni Kōkiri is leading policy work with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) on generative AI (artificial intelligence) and how it relates to Māori culture.
Te Puni Kōkiri said there were challenges around how cultural intellectual property is used and protected as AI advances.
“We acknowledge that Māori leaders and experts are actively discussing these issues and working towards how they will engage Government on this,” the agency said.
“Te Puni Kōkiri is working here and abroad to ensure that Māori can realise the benefits and effectively determine how their cultural intellectual property is used.”
The Government department also said it was actively contributing to discussions at the World Intellectual Property Organisation, with UN member states on how to recognise cultural intellectual property rights, including what international standards are “needed”.
A Ministry for Culture and Heritage Manatū Taonga briefing referred to AI as a key technological advancement with risks and benefits.
Officials stated while it offers tools for creative expression, translation and content production, “it also raises critical issues around originality, copyright, cultural appropriation and trust in the authenticity of stories”.
The Ministry for Culture and Heritage used AI to generate images for its long-term insights briefing, using the prompt “New Zealand society in 2040″.
Officials did not use AI to write content in the briefing.
The first scenario showed a technology-riddled metropolis with 4K LED screens. Officials noted by 2040, it could be possible that digital storytelling is driven by AI and immersive virtual reality platforms.
Officials said te reo Māori and tikanga Māori could be increasingly embedded into digital storytelling in this possible future, but said “a lack of robust content moderation means misinformation and deepfake narratives flourish”.
The agency warned there could be a decline of fact-checking and a rise in cyber crime.
It also noted positives, with the possibility of AI tools being able to widely translate and “preserve” indigenous languages, and provide more accessibility for “cultural experiences”.
Officials expected New Zealand’s cultural system could be “deeply intertwined” with artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
“While these technologies bring unprecedented opportunities for creating, sharing and protecting stories, they also introduce significant ethical, legal, cultural and governance challenges,” the briefing stated.
It said digital sovereignty could become a major issue.
A separate scenario warned of a “series of cascading crises” with the rise of artificial intelligence and an interconnected world, including cyber attacks, extreme weather events and democratic erosion.
Officials suggested it could be possible, with limited access to “reliable” online spaces, for New Zealanders to turn back to localised, community-based storytelling.
“However, with frequent infrastructure failures and an overburdened energy grid, preserving and sharing stories digitally becomes a challenge,” the officials said.
The scenario also suggested a decline in centralised technology platforms could see a “resurgence in traditional knowledge-sharing practices” but could also see international travel become more costly and restrictive.
The agency suggested such a move could spark renewed interest in physical archives.
A separate scenario on “strict Government oversight” suggested it could be possible for digital stories to pass through national fact-checking bodies with AI-driven monitoring systems.
Officials said it could be possible for New Zealand to implement data sovereignty laws, grounded in the Treaty of Waitangi, that provide “a pathway to decolonise the ownership of Māori cultural intellectual property”.
On the final image, titled A New Digital World, officials wrote radical advancements in technology could reshape storytelling, enabling Kiwis to share experiences as immersive sensory data.
“Holographic archives preserve cultural narratives and data in interactive 3D spaces, and AI curators help personalise storytelling experiences,” it was predicted as a possibility.
The agency said it would be possible for the country’s digital landscape to have “shared governance with Māori and the wider public” and while concerns around AI persist, Kiwis could “embrace the fusion of tradition and technology”.
A parliamentary select committee report following a hearing on the briefing quotes the Ministry for Culture and Heritage as saying some of the images it produced were “problematic and troubling”.
“AI has challenges representing cultures in ways that New Zealanders are comfortable with,” the report noted.
An unnamed MP told the committee their culture was “not a peep show” and said “anything that we run must absolutely be designed by us, for us, for our whole nation”.
Associate Professor of Environmental and Intellectual Property Law David Jefferson told Newstalk ZB the use of digital technologies and biodiversity has been a long-standing issue.
Jefferson said the issues around intellectual property are fairly new in relation to AI usage, but said Government agencies are “aware” and “trying to take steps to make some changes”.
“I think we need to start from the place of seeing Māori data as a taonga. Like you would with any other taonga, it needs to be treated with special care, and there should be tikanga [correct procedure] associated with how you access it and how you utilise it,” Jefferson said.
Kahui Legal partner Lynell Tuffery Huria said she believed there were positives in that AI can help with education around culture and intellectual property.
Huria said it was a problem that there was no “inbuilt mechanism for ensuring that proper consent has been given to share that information, that the information is correct, that it’s been treated with appropriate cultural respect”.
She added there was “a lot of work to be done” in this space to support indigenous people to be able to manage their intellectual property and to have access and benefit from it.
Azaria Howell is a multimedia reporter working from Parliament’s press gallery. She joined NZME in 2022 and became a Newstalk ZB political reporter in late 2024, with a keen interest in public service agency reform and government spending.