As there is no AI-specific legislation in New Zealand, there are no relevant statutory definitions. As New Zealand is an adherent to the OECD AI Principles, the definition of ‘AI system’ in those principles is relevant – namely

<blockquote‘An AI system is a machine-based system that, for explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as predictions, content, recommendations, or decisions that can influence physical or virtual environments. Different AI systems vary in their levels of autonomy and adaptiveness after deployment.’

This is the definition used in the AI Strategy, the Framework, the AI Guidance for Business, and the GenAI Guidelines.

The OPC AI Guidance broadly defines AI as computer systems where one or more of the following applies:

• machine learning systems developed or refined by processing training data;
• classifier systems used to put information into categories (e.g., captioning images);
• interpreter systems that turn noisy input data into standardised outputs (e.g., deciding what words are present in speech or handwriting);
• generative systems used to create text, images, computer code, or something else; and/or
• automation where computers take on tasks that people have done up until recently.