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Following the publication of our report about the legal implications of deepfake technology and synthetic media, we organised and hosted a forum of around 13 government agencies and regulators to share our findings. < Back Presentation and discussion to government agencies about deepfakes Past Project October 2019 Following the publication of Perception Inception - our report about the legal implications of deepfakes and synthetic media - we organised and hosted a forum of around 13 government agencies and regulators to share our findings. While scheduled for an hour, attendees stayed for a further hour simply to continue the discussion. The meeting was hosted by InternetNZ. Attendees included staff from: the Ministry of Defence, the Office of Film and Literature Classification, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Electoral Commission, ESR, the Media Council, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Netsafe, the New Zealand Police, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, the Broadcasting Standards Authority, the Department of Internal Affairs, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Human Rights Commission. Access the discussion paper Read our 'Perception Inception' report Previous Next

New Zealand law doesn't make it clear whether synthesising sexual imagery of someone without their consent is criminal. We made a submission to the Justice Committee outlining how the law should be fixed. < Back New Zealand law and synthetic pornography Past Project March 2021 New Zealand law doesn't make it clear whether synthesising sexual imagery of someone without their consent is criminal. We made a submission to the Justice Committee outlining how the law should be fixed. Our work on synthetic media has been mentioned in Parliamentary debates on the topic . While the Justice Committee recently declined to incorporate clarifying amendments around synthetic “pornography”, MP Louisa Wall introduced a supplementary order paper proposing an amendment that would resolve the legal ambiguity we identified. Submission on Parliament website Read our report on deepfake technology Previous Next

Institutional investors representing $13 trillion issued an ultimatum after the Christchurch attacks: platform companies must do better. Two years on, how have they performed? What is the trend of global regulation? < Back Assessing Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet for institutional investors Past Project August, October 2021 Advising a coalition of institutional investors on content moderation and terrorist content Institutional investors representing $13 trillion issued an ultimatum after the Christchurch attacks: platform companies must do better. Two years on, how have the companies performed? What is the trend of global regulation? Brainbox prepared an independent assessment of the changes made by social media companies to mitigate the impact of incidents like the attacks in Christchurch on 15 March 2019. It also drew on insights gained from participating in tabletop exercises to test emergency response protocols held in Wellington in 2019. We assessed Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet for the investor group. The investors also sought an analysis of what good regulation looks like when it comes to content moderation by social media companies. Our analysis was grounded by reference to human rights principles and frameworks. The analysis was funded by an investor coalition led by the Guardians of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, with contributory funding from Neuberger Berman and Northern Trust. In our report for the investor coalition, we concluded that transparency-based approaches to social media regulation deserved further investigation. We had the opportunity to investigate such approaches in our report to the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence’s responsible AI working group, available here. NZ Super Fund media materials Report to the investor coalition Previous Next

We're moving to the next phase of an action research project to help communities stay reliably connected to the internet during extreme weather events, and in the face of climate change.   We’ll be learning from past experiences, like those from Cyclone Gabrielle, as well as looking at our current infrastructure and any vulnerabilities.   We want you to join us!   We need input and participation from people with direct experience of things like climate change impacts and disruptions to Internet infrastructure.  This includes community members, researchers and first-line responders, as well as those from community organisations, local and national government agencies and infrastructure companies.   We are looking for as much input as possible, including a small group of people for a coalition to collaborate with the research team here in Aotearoa, and an advisory group from across the globe, all towards improving Internet Infrastructure and Climate Resilience for Aotearoa. The lead researcher for the project is Dr Ellen Strickland , with the project team based at the Brainbox Institute and working closely with Pāua Interface . The work is also supported by an expert advisory group . The project is made possible with support from the Internet Society Foundation as well as support from the NZ Telecommunications Forum .   You can get in touch and find out more on the project website , or join us for an online information-sharing session on 26th March 2025 .

Ellen Strickland As we wind down the final days of 2024, I wanted to share a bit about an exciting new research project getting underway for next year. The project focuses on growing the resilience of New Zealand’s Internet infrastructure in a world of climate change and extreme weather.  I’m particularly excited for this project because Internet infrastructure is something I’m passionate about, both nerding out about cables and satellites and signals and also caring deeply about how connectivity can support communities. Also, like more people than ever, I’ve recently been personally impacted by extreme weather events; I was caught in a dangerous flash flood event while driving through Northland in February 2023 and then recently in October this year I was with family at their home in Florida during Hurricane Milton, the quickest growing Category 5 hurricane on record. In both these instances, Internet infrastructure was impacted, making a stressful, dangerous, and physically difficult experience all the worse due to connectivity issues. Many people and communities in Aotearoa New Zealand experienced extreme weather events in early 2023, including experiencing impacts on Internet infrastructure and disruption to connectivity, which can be vital for enabling response and supporting community needs.  This project will learn from these recent experiences.  Many within industry, government, in research, and in communities have insights they’ve gained, as well as things they are currently doing and more they want to do in this area. The project will work to convene some of these people and organisations for action-focused and collaborative research. Its core component will be a national Internet Infrastructure Climate Resilience Coalition, which will convene in early 2025 with work extending into 2026, alongside desk research.  I’ve played a role in leading a few collaborative cross-sector initiatives around Internet related issues, through structures like New Zealand’s NetHui and a range of global Internet governance initiatives. One of the things I find most satisfying in my work life has been bringing people together who are passionate about a topic and facilitating collaborative learning and action. This action-focused research project will use that kind of approach to help build understanding around the vulnerabilities and context of New Zealand internet infrastructure by bringing together people from across sectors to learn from each other and to take action, together and separately, to improve resilience of our Internet in Aotearoa New Zealand. This project is being made possible through funding from the Internet Society Foundation . The project grant application was supported by the  Brainbox Institute  and the New Zealand Telecommunications Forum , who will both be involved in the project. The project was inspired and informed by my recent fellowship with the Critical Infrastructure Lab at the University of Amsterdam. We’ll have a lot more to say about the project in early 2025 but I’m keen to hear from any people and organisations working in this area who might be interested to engage in the project. There will be lots of ways to provide input into the research project and the coalition, so if you or your organisation are interested in hearing updates about the project next year or would be interested in engaging in its work, you can use the sign-up form below, or email coalition@brainbox.institute

Ximena Smith, Communications Lead and Senior Consultant The crisis we are currently seeing in the news media was on full display yesterday morning during the oral submissions to a parliamentary select committee for the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill. “It is a real fight for survival for us”, TVNZ’s executive editor Phil O’Sullivan said. Sinead Boucher, owner of Stuff, warned that the news media’s ability to help keep New Zealand “free of corruption and our societies healthy” is currently in “great peril”. Some of the figures raised by submitters helped expose the dire reality of this crisis: NZ Geographic publisher James Frankham said magazine advertising revenue had fallen from $210m to $117m since 2012, and chair of the Radio Broadcasters Association Jana Rangooni predicted that, unless some intervention happens, all commercial media would go extinct in the next decade. While a range of perspectives were aired yesterday on what should be done to rectify the situation, there was little disagreement about why the news media is in this position: in essence, the digital age has disrupted the business models of news media, and now, they are struggling to compete with global tech platforms like Google and Meta for digital ad revenue. It’s this competitive relationship between news media and big tech that the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill targets. Simply put, the bill would compel digital platforms to negotiate commercial deals with news companies, in order to try to balance the scales financially and to ensure the future viability of the New Zealand news media. “People should have to pay for using content” A key premise of the bill is the argument that tech giants use news media content from kiwi outlets for their own commercial benefit without paying for it. For example, a number of news company submitters complained about the impact of ‘zero click searches’, where search engines like Google scrape and summarise information from webpages – like news sites – to answer users’ search queries without having to click away from the search engine. Another example that came up in submissions was the use of news content to train generative AI models, with no compensation paid to news outlets. Michael Boggs, Chief Executive of NZME, likened this to radio stations playing music on air: if they want to play a song, then they have to pay a licence fee. “You have to pay royalties, it’s a no-brainer. People should have to pay for using content.” Stuff’s Sinead Boucher put it more bluntly, describing generative AI products as “no more than modern day succubi”. However, this logic can go both ways. Digital platforms like Facebook and Google unquestionably provide news outlets with free referral traffic. While some media executives downplayed the importance of this traffic during their submission, the fact of the matter is that news outlets do have the option to opt-out from having snippets of their content displayed on digital platforms – and yet, they have chosen not to do so. The reason for this comes down to another point raised by several submitters, which is the huge amount of control that big global tech platforms have over New Zealand’s digital infrastructure. At the end of the day, the news media needs big tech more than the other way around. New Zealand media isn’t alone in this power imbalance with digital platforms – for example, we’re currently seeing the same dynamic play out in Canada, where a similar bill has recently gone into effect. Rather than coming to the bargaining table, Meta has dug its heels in and blocked news links from appearing on its platform for Canadian users, insisting that it doesn’t need this content in order to be commercially successful. The Copyright Act Former District Court Judge David Harvey suggested in his submission that news outlets already do have a tool at their disposal for dealing with tech giants using New Zealand news content: the Copyright Act. However, some newsroom executives dismissed this as an option. In her submission as President of the News Publishers’ Association, Sinead Boucher said the Copyright Act was not a viable option for New Zealand newsrooms dealing with this issue, as it “plunged people into endless litigation with the biggest media companies in the world." Another reason for newsrooms’ hesitancy to pursue this in the courts is probably because it’s unclear whether a case would actually succeed. For example, newsrooms will be closely watching the current copyright lawsuits against OpenAI in the US. Just this week, a court partially dismissed two lawsuits brought by authors against the artificial intelligence company for copyright infringement, with the judge saying that the authors had not sufficiently demonstrated that there was “substantial similarity” between ChatGPT’s output and their copyrighted works. While commentators have noted the New York Times’ case against OpenAI appears to be strong, as they have clear evidence of ChatGPT outputs regurgitating some of their stories verbatim, a judgement could still conceivably go either way. It’s understandable, then, that New Zealand newsrooms are backing the Fair News Digital Bargaining Bill instead of potentially expensive litigation, as the Bill could provide them with a more certain method of revenue sharing with digital platforms. However, the problem is that this bill wouldn’t do anything to address the aforementioned reliance that New Zealand media has on digital platforms – in fact, it would make them even more reliant on these platforms, as it would firmly establish the platforms as a critical source of funding. Another way? Ultimately, the weakness of this bill is that it tries to bring a copyright-based argument to a markets and competition problem. Instead, a stronger approach would treat these issues as separate, and would address the root cause of the underlying power imbalance without making media dependent on the platforms for income. For example, one alternative could be a bill that breaks-up the dominance digital platforms have in the online advertising market.  This strategy is already being tested in other jurisdictions; for example, The Competition and Transparency in Digital Advertising Act in the US could be a useful blueprint for New Zealand lawmakers keen to bring greater transparency and competition to New Zealand’s digital advertising market, and to level the playing field between the global tech titans and local media players. Of course, breaking up concentration in digital advertising would not be a silver bullet to the woes of the New Zealand media industry. Other options also need to be considered – for example, despite some of the negative optics of the Public Interest Journalism Fund, the government shouldn’t completely dismiss ways in which public funds can be distributed at-arms-length towards public-interest media, in ways that build public trust. Right now, it’s indisputable that the media is at a crisis point, and there will be dire consequences for democracy if local media outlets were to collapse. But as policymakers now deliberate upon solutions, their focus must pivot towards fostering a resilient, competitive, and autonomous news ecosystem – one that steers clear of overreliance on major tech platforms for sustenance.