10238 (2026). Camilla Belich to the Minister for the Environment

10238 (2026). Camilla Belich to the Minister for the Environment: What new artificial intelligence or machine learning systems, tools, or platforms, if any, have been commissioned, contracted, or deployed by any department or entity for which the Minister is responsible since 27 November 2023, listed by system name, supplier, purpose, contract value, and date of commissioning?

Hon Penny Simmonds: I am advised that Microsoft Copilot is the only artificial intelligence (AI) tool approved for use at the Ministry for the Environment for office productivity and business process improvement purposes. All information regarding this system is publicly available at https://www.microsoft.com/en-nz/microsoft-365-copilot. The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) has approved the use of Microsoft Chat and Microsoft Copilot for business purposes. Microsoft Chat is free and comes part of Windows 11. Microsoft Copilot is a licence add-on for the Microsoft 365 office applications (Email, Word, etc). The EPA currently has 24 licenses for CoPilot at a cost of $371 per use, totalling $8,904 per annum. One other AI initiative has been commissioned with Deloitte and is focussed on developing a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that demonstrates how AI can accelerate zoning analysis tasks for policy makers at the Ministry for the Environment and validates the solution’s ability to scale to support the development of new national land zones as part of Resource Management.