In the past few weeks, government and opposition MPs have started accusing each other of giving speeches so poor that they looked like they might have been written on ChatGPT.
But how widespread is the use of AI? According to Newsroom research into ministerial AI use, most government ministers themselves do not use AI chatbots in their work.
They use it to assist with speechwriting, proofread columns, as a preliminary research tool, brainstorm, draft questions for officials, draft communications, generate images, and more.
The newsroom has requested access to the AI chat logs of various ministries and agencies under the Official Information Act. The request only asked for logs of interactions made by the minister himself, but clarified that information from personal accounts may also be included when acting in an official capacity.
All ministers responded to the request except Chris Bishop, who the newsroom asked for an update. Of these, only four companies publicly stated that they used AI themselves, and only one made logs of their interactions publicly available.
Education and Immigration Minister Erica Stanford said she once used AI to help write speeches she gave in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles promoting the Active Investor Plus visa. She released a recording of the exchange, but ultimately told Newsroom that she improvised the speech and used the AI’s output as notes.
In the log, Stanford University instructed ChatGPT to write a speech that began with the lyrics to “Six Months in a Leaky Boat.” This song by Split Enz used the meaning of the song to show that New Zealand is friendlier than ever.
How Newsroom got this information
We have carefully articulated our requests under the Official Information Act to ensure that the use of AI by almost all ministers is covered. This includes requesting logs from relevant personal or unofficial accounts, as the minister may not have an official account to interact with the AI chatbot.
Ultimately, we submitted the following request to all ministries, including the Parliamentary Secretary:
- all [Minister]Chat logs generated using AI tools including but not limited to ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, etc.
- This includes: The minister’s chat logs are recorded on personal or unofficial accounts where he was acting in an official capacity. Signs that you are acting in an official capacity may include information about social media posts, press releases or other public statements, or about government, civil service or ministerial policies or actions.
“I have to give a speech tomorrow in New York as Minister of Immigration, addressing potential American investors who may be interested in our ‘golden visa’, called the Active Investor Plus Visa, where you have to invest either 10 million or 5 million,” she wrote.
“I want people to leave thinking this is a great country. Far from the world’s problems, but still connected and close. I want to come across as smart and inspirational.”
After ChatGPT created the draft, she made further requests and improved it. We asked for references to Rocket Lab and the new secondary curriculum, and then expanded the section on New Zealand business.
When AI pointed out that upcoming changes to the foreign buyer ban would allow Active Investor Plus visa holders to buy a home in New Zealand “not just as an investment but to have a base”, she instructed: “Don’t say a home is an investment”.
Asked about the use of AI, Stanford spoke about adding AI to the secondary school curriculum before sharing her own experience.
“I don’t use AI a lot, but I know it’s a useful tool. AI needs to be critically checked across multiple versions and combined with human intuition and experience.”
South Island Minister and Minister for Game and Fisheries James Meagher said in response to a request from Newsroom that he has a personal ChatGPT account. Of the past 20 chat logs, “only two can be interpreted as possibly having a tenuous connection to official capacity,” he said.
He denied the request because a more thorough examination of the chat logs would require considerable cross-checking. He also refused to provide two logs he had identified as potentially relevant, under the Official Information Act, which allows ministers and officials to withhold their “free and frank opinions”.
“In my view, prompts and queries to AI are similar to Google searches and database queries seeking information in draft form that can be used as the basis for more developed documents and records. When these drafts, often expressed as free and honest thoughts and questions from users about AI systems, are made public, the effective operation of public affairs is likely to be at risk,” he said.
“If all unformed ideas and questions were subject to public disclosure, ministers (or officials) would be overly cautious about how they record their initial untested views. They would postpone the drafting process until their ideas are further developed, they would delay circulating early ideas to AI that could provide valuable input, and they would be less likely to seek help from AI or use AI at all.”
Meagher told Newsroom that from his own experience, AI has limited usefulness for MPs and ministers. He said he briefly used Copilot (approved by Congress) to prioritize email and diary management, but “didn’t find it useful at this stage.”
“While we believe that AI tools have future potential, their use for MPs and ministers is currently limited as they are not used in conjunction with official or confidential information,” he said.
Buildings and Construction Minister Chris Penck also rejected Newsroom’s request on substantive cross-checking grounds.
“Generative artificial intelligence is built into commonly used applications such as Google, Microsoft Word, and Outlook. Trying to match all the inputs and outputs to these tools requires significant matching,” he wrote.
When asked further about their use of AI, they said they used it “very occasionally” in their work. He said he uses the tool to “proofread columns, assist with preliminary research across a wide range of topics, and generate images for internal use and social media.”
He added that the technology could have been more widely used, given the integration of AI into products from Microsoft and Google. In theory, most Google searches could be considered AI interactions, given the AI-generated summaries that currently appear at the top of search results.
Penck, like many other ministers, noted that the use of AI in his office followed best practice guidelines set out by the Home Office.
“It is also my expectation that artificial intelligence will be rigorously checked against human intelligence and used as an auxiliary tool rather than as a means to generate the entire content. Submitting sensitive material to large-scale language models is strictly prohibited,” he said.
The last politician to acknowledge the use of AI was Simon Court, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure and RMA Reform. He declined to release the full logs, citing similar substantive matching provisions, but provided a summary of his use of AI.
“Your request is administratively difficult to address. We have identified that there may be a large amount of information within the scope of your request. Locating, evaluating, and extracting the information within the scope will take significant time. Complete logs cannot be easily extracted, and extraction alone requires extensive manual collation,” he said.
“Due to the nature of the information, I am required to perform much of the work alone, and my office has limited staffing. Given the other responsibilities and work of these individuals, I believe this will impair the efficient operation of my office.”
Information potentially within the scope of the request was identified across Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, the latter of which the court said was the primary tool it used in its official capacity. He discovered 53 ChatGPT logs related to RMA reform and infrastructure.
“Of these, we identified 47 related to RMA issues and 6 related to infrastructure issues. From our initial search, there were many examples of very long chat logs. Specific subjects for these issues include environmental restrictions, deregulation, enforcement, planning, property rights, rational use, biodiversity/wildlife, infrastructure financing and financing, and public-private partnerships,” he wrote.
“These issue-related uses include use as a productivity aid to structure thinking and accelerate routine policy work, including assisting in translating complex topics into clear, decision-neutral summaries of key concepts and research questions Materials are used to provide information and all related outputs are treated as draft materials.
Cote said he found the AI to be “very useful”, saying it “allows us to get curated answers to complex questions very quickly, gives us ideas for stress testing, and allows us to iterate and refine information packages.” He said there were occasional inaccuracies, which could be mitigated by continued vigilance.
“Having options is always better than none,” he says.
The newsroom lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman about Meagher and Cote’s refusal.
