Published on the 17/02/2025 | Written by Newsdesk
AppWrap February 2025 17.02 Netsafe and NZ Tech have been accused of ‘lawyering up’ after the Human Rights Commission criticised them for failing to protect Jacinda Ardern from online abuse. RNZ reports the HRC was also critical of New Zealand
AppWrap February 2025
17.02 Netsafe and NZ Tech have been accused of ‘lawyering up’ after the Human Rights Commission criticised them for failing to protect Jacinda Ardern from online abuse. RNZ reports the HRC was also critical of New Zealand’s online safety code, launched by Netsafe and NZTech and administered by NZTech, saying it wasn’t fit for purpose. NZTech and Netsafe say the commission’s findings have been arrived at unlawfully, and are tainted by bias and predetermination.
15.02 OpenAI’s board has unanimously rejected a US$97 billion takeover bid by Elon Musk, saying the company is not for sale and dubbing Musk’s bid his ‘latest attempt to disrupt his competition’. AP notes Musk, an early OpenAI investor, sued for breach of contract a year ago over what he called a betrayal of OpenAi’s founding aims as a non-profit. The company is increasingly seeking to capitalise on the commercial success of generative AI, but first needs to buy out the non-profits assets. Musk was attempting to buy the non-profit.
15.02 The University of Waikato has admitted it is using facial recognition on students at a Hangzhou, China campus. RNZ reports the university says the technology is being used for ‘facility access’, with no plans for the tech to be introduced in New Zealand.
11.02 The US and UK have both refused to sign a declaration on ‘inclusive and sustainable’ AI at a Paris summit. Sixty other signatories, including Australia and New Zealand, France, China and Canada, signed the document which calls for priorities to ensure AI is open, inclusive, transparent, ethical, safe, secure and trustworthy and sustainable. The Guardian says the UK says the statement has not gone far enough in addressing global governance of AI and its impact on national security, while the US has criticised ‘excessive regulation’ of technology and warned against cooperating with China.
11.02 US vice president JD Vance has criticised Europe’s ‘excessive regulation’ saying it could cripple the AI industry, Time reports.
11.02 Microsoft is adjusting its Office-Teams pricing in an effort to avoid an EU trust fine, Reuters reports. The company has offered to widen the price differential between Office with Teams and without Teams in a move which could help rivals offer their own products at competitive prices and entice users to switch to them.
10.02 MBIE’s Gill Jolly and the AI Forum have contributed towards a new 300-page International AI Safety Report. The report looks at risks and safety of general-purpose AI risks including large-scale labour market impacts, scams, non-consensual imagery, bias, hacking and loss of control over AI. The report notes a need for policymakers and governments to have access to the current scientific understanding on risks and calls for global collaboration to take advantage of opportunities.
10.02 The PSA has slammed Te Whatu Ora’s plans to cut almost half its data and digital positions, calling the plan ‘astonishing, shocking and unacceptable’. RNZ reports the ‘reset’ will cut or pause more than 100 projects, and cut more than 1000 jobs. The agency needs to save $99m.
08.02 Commerce and consumer affairs minister, Andrew Bayly, says we should ‘embrace’ cryptocurrency and the ‘real opportunities’ it presents. He told the Financial Service Council Outlook 2025 there was real commercial opportunity in New Zealand being a trading platform. Bayly also referred to blockchain as a ‘fantastic’ technology for anti-money laundering and noted US president Donald Trump was pushing crypto, something he said was ‘fascinating’.
08.02 Meta is cutting five percent of its workforce – or potentially around 4,000 jobs – on Monday as part of its performance-based job cuts. Workers in more than a dozen countries outside the US will be notified via work and personal emails and will lose access to systems within an hour of being informed, Business Insider says.
06.02 Workday is laying off 1,750 employees, or around 8.5 percent of its global workforce, saying it is realigning resources in light of increasing demand for AI and its potential to drive growth for Workday, FastCompany reports.
05.02 The National Cyber Security Centre has issued guidance for edge device security after observing an increase in targeted attacks on the devices. It has released four documents, covering mitigation strategies for edge devices for both executives and practitioners, security consideration for edge devices and guidance on digital forensics and protective monitoring specifications for producers of network devices and appliances. “Failing to secure these network perimeters is equivalent to leaving doors open,” NCSC says.
05.02 Health minister Simeon Brown has said he expects to see ‘substantial progress’ in the use of telehealth. He told eHealthNews digital services and telehealth are key enablers for achieving better health outcomes for Kiwis and he expects to see improvements in the use of technology such as telehealth in the sector, and expanded use of video calls by Healthline.
05.02 Kiwi fintech Hnry is launching in the UK, five years after it hit the Australian market. the company was founded in 2017 and says its combined Australasian market has grown by 58 percent over the last two years, thanks in part to a $35m series B raise in 2023. It’s now targeting the UK’s four million sole traders.
05.02 The government is considering a new tertiary institution model, combining universities and apprenticeship-style training, RNZ reports. The ‘combined university vocational entity’ model is outlined in a cabinet paper which also shows funding for bodies overseeing industry qualifications and standards will be halted for the last six months of the year so funding targets can be met.
04.02 Salesforce is cutting 1,000 jobs – while continuing a hiring push for AI-focused sales roles. Bloomberg says it is unclear which divisions will be impacted, and staff will be able to apply for other jobs within Salesforce. The company had nearly 73,000 staff a year ago.
04.02 Mastercard plans to phase out credit card numbers by 2030, replacing them with tokenisation and biometric authentication.
04.02 Twenty-eight percent of SMBs are planning on putting most of their budget for growing their business towards tech and digital transformation this year, according to an MYOB survey of 500+ SMBs. The survey shows 30 percent Kiwi SMBs are entering 2025 with more work lined up than usual, while 41 percent say they have the same level of work or sales in the pipeline as usual, with 24 percent planning to increase spending to improve business operations this year. Spend on marketing and sales tops the list at 33 percent.
04.02 New Zealand faces an increasing struggle to keep the increasingly powerful ‘digital oligarchy’ in check, according to an Auckland University academic. Professor Alexandra Andhov, chair in law and technology, says the digital age has fundamentally changed national sovereignty with big tech takin gon functions traditionally reserved for government institutions, including becoming arbiters of speech. She warns of an ‘urgent need’ to reconcile the global influence of tech companies with local democratic processes and to create mechanisms which safeguard individual and national sovereignty.
03.02 Being AI’s shares have been suspended until further notice by the NZX regulatory agency NZ RegCo following the resignation of two of its independent directors, Brett O’Riley and Andy Higgs, took effect last week. NZX rules require a minimum of at least two independent directors, RegCo says.
AppWrap January 2025
31.01 The US Justice Department has filed a lawsuit to block HPE’s proposed US$14b acquisition of Juniper Networks, citing antitrust concerns. HPE and Juniper both say they will ‘vigorously defend’ the deal in court.
30.01 Icehouse Ventures has closed out its second growth fund with a record $122m to invest in 20 late-stage start-up tech companies. Growth Fund I backed 32 companies including Hnry, Halter and Crimson Education, StartupDaily reports.
28.01 US President Trump has claimed Microsoft is in discussions to buy TikTok’s US operations. Trump made the claim to reporters aboard Air Force One. He signed an executive order extending the deadline for ByteDance to divest from TikTok a day after a law banning it came into effect. The outcome of the proposed deal is expected to be revealed in the coming days, Newsweek says.
27.01 New Zealand has eased its visa requirements in an effort to attract ‘digital nomads’. The new rules enable tourists to work remotely for their home countries for up to 90 days after which they need to declare themselves as a New Zealand tax resident. 1News reports the government is targeting the initiative particularly at highly skilled IT workers from the US and East Asia aiming to boost numbers of high-value tourists.
24.01 Road Ninja, a Kiwi developed subscription online marketplace for commercial drivers, is expanding into Australia, focusing on the fly-in, fly-out driving jobs in the mining sector. The company claims to have onboarded more than 500 drivers and 100 companies in its first year in New Zealand, facilitating more than $1 million in transactions, NZ Trucking reports.
23.01 Orion Health is being sold to Canada’s Healwell for $200m. The deal includes Virtuoso Digital Front Door and Amadeus Digital Care Record, used for clinical portals across New Zealand, however it does not include the Orchestral health intelligence platform and hospital patient management system which will move to a new entity, McCrae Tech, eHealthNews reports.
23.01 Consumer NZ has slammed Payments NZ, saying New Zealand has been left behind the rest of the world when it comes to modern payments infrastructure because of ‘abject failure’ on the part of the bank-owned payments governance organisation and the banking sector. New Zealand only country in the OECD not to have committed to, or implemented, a real-time payments network. Consumer says while there is widespread agreement that businesses, consumers and the economy will benefit, banks only benefit a little, ‘so they’ve chosen not to do it’.
23.01 Callaghan Innovation is being scrapped and four public research organisations are being established in a major shake up of New Zealand’s science and research sector. The four public research organisations include one focused on advanced technology. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who announced the changes, says he’s particularly excited about the advance tech institute which will be focused on commercialisation of technology like AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology. The remaining three organisations will bring together seven existing CRIs. Callaghan Innovation’s key functions will be moved to other entities.
23.01 A new agency, Invest New Zealand, is being set up to attract foreign direct investment across a range of critical sectors, including fintech, and manufacturing and innovation. Todd McClay will lead the agency as Minister of Trade and Investment, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said in his State of the Nation 2025.
23.01 LinkedIn is being sued for disclosing customer information to train AI models. The class action filed on behalf of millions of premium users alleges the Microsoft-owned platform disclosed private messages to third parties without permission to train models, and then attempted to ‘cover their tracks’ by quietly introducing a privacy setting to enable or disable sharing, and updating its privacy policy, Reuters reports.
23.01 US President Donald Trump has announced a $500 billion joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank to build a network of data centres and the infrastructure to power AI development in the US. The Guardian reports the move comes just a day after Trump reversed predecessor Joe Biden’s executive order on AI safety standards.
19.01 Shane Reti has been appointed Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology, succeeding Judith Collins in the role. Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says Reti, stripped of the health portfolio, will assume responsibility for New Zealand’s universities and science sector in part of a wider shift to drive economic growth in 2025.
16.01 Kiwi pricing engine specialist Flintfox has been acquired by US venture-backed rebate management company Enable for an undisclosed sum. Enable says the acquisition enables it to address the growing demand for end-to-end digitalisation of pricing and rebate processes.
14.01 Scott Technology has won $18m in new contracts with three companies. The deals include an advanced lamb primal system for JBS in Australia, a loin deboner for Silver Fern Farms in New Zealand and multiple bladestop units for Cargill’s North American meat processing operations, Scott Technology says.
06.01 Consumer NZ has laid a complaint with the Commerce Commission over Microsoft’s attempts to push consumers to more expensive Microsoft 365 services containing AI features. Consumers are facing 30-40 percent price hikes for M365 – but it’s not a price increase but rather an upsell – and one many customers can bypass, by pretending to cancel their plan, at which point they’re presented with the Microsoft 365 Classic option, at the old price (and without Copilot), Consumer NZ says. It says it believes the move is a flagrant breach of goodwill and trust and that it is unethical to automatically upgrade customers. Its complaint to ComCom alleges breach of the Fair Trading Act by tricking users to upgrade.
For 2024 news from around the web head over to the 2024 AppWrap archive.
