Science, Innovation, and Technology Minister Judith Collins announced a programme to drive the uptake of Artificial Intelligence (AI) among New Zealand businesses.
The AI Activator will unlock AI's potential for New Zealand businesses through a range of support, including access to AI research experts, technical assistance, AI tools and resources, and funding and grant options.
AI will contribute $76 billion to New Zealand’s GDP by 2038. As the rest of the world rapidly adopts this technology, it is crucial to support businesses in improving their awareness and uptake of AI to capitalise on its benefits.
“Today, I am also announcing the pilot of GovGPT, which will make it easier to access reliable government information and support for businesses and people wishing to interact with government agencies,” said Collins.
“GovGPT is an exciting first step towards a vision of a ‘digital front-door', where individuals can find answers to their questions about government in a convenient and timely way.”
GovGPT is in a closed pilot phase, trained on specific, publicly available data from selected government websites. Its primary focus is helping businesses quickly find information about government products and services.
The next step is to make it accessible for businesses and organisations through the Callaghan Innovation Labs webpage, a digital front door for government websites.
“We know there’s a lot of Government support and information out there to help businesses thrive. But, it can be hard to find and is often located across several sites. Businesses often don’t have time to hunt for what they need from the Government, so there’s a risk of missing out on support or crucial information,” said Sarah Sun, Callaghan Innovation Head of AI and Digital.
“Ultimately, our vision is for a simple, digital front door where Kiwis can quickly and easily get answers to their questions about Government support and services. Anyone should be able to access important information in the most intuitive way to humans—natural conversations in their preferred language. GovGPT is a first step.”
Callaghan Innovation partnered with Whāriki Māori Business Network and a technology provider to develop the GovGPT proof of concept in less than two months by combining the existing functionality of large language models (LLMs) and a library of existing software modules.
GovGPT features multilingual support in many languages, including text-based Te Reo Māori.
“It’s great to have Whāriki Māori Business Network on board to help us ensure the cultural relevance and appropriateness of content to offer a comprehensive, valuable tool for all users.”
The GovGPT pilot is already ‘multimodal’, supporting both text and speech chats. However, the pilot will also be updated and improved rapidly over the next few months to create a seamless user experience, including customisation options for the conversational companion, such as different voices, tones, and speech speeds.
“We are keen to ensure GovGPT meets the varying needs of the diverse business community in Aotearoa, New Zealand so that finding important Government information is as easy as conversing with someone.”
GovGPT uses a technique called “Retrieval Augmented Generation” (RAG) to enhance the accuracy and reliability of the generative AI model by fetching relevant facts from a set of Government websites.
Callaghan Innovation plans to make the GovGPT pilot available on its website in October.
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