"It's part of our identity, part of who we are as New Zealanders. There is just so much more to the language then an AI being able to translate what you want to say."

Important story and conversation from RNZ here. Waikato University, associate professor of computer science Te Taka Keegan and Ngapera Riley from Figure.nz.

Despite the challenges, Keegan was generally positive about AI.

"It's part of our identity, part of who we are as New Zealanders. There is just so much more to the language then an AI being able to translate what you want to say."

He thought if it could be isolated, trained by Māori, and controlled at an iwi level, Māori could retain sovereignty and use it as a helpful tool.

"My hope is that tools like ChatGPT can help preserve and use [te reo], but we still need the human element to input into the language, and to check that we aren't using incorrect sources," Riley said.