New Zealand's first AI-generated television advertisement has aired, but is the country ready to handle the legal implications of artificial intelligence in advertising?
The advertisement is for Bremworth Wool Carpets New Zealand, and featured a woman with dark hair intertwined with cloud-like tufts of wool and images of sweeping landscapes that could be Aotearoa.
"We are proud to share our new TV commercial, believed to be the first time a complete TVC has been created visually by AI for broadcast in NZ," Bremworth chief brand and product officer Rochelle Flint wrote.
"The use of AI has opened up new possibilities, allowing us to experiment with more innovative and interesting campaign content while reducing both time and cost.
"For our Crafted Feels Different campaign, it has allowed us to develop a beautiful video asset without real world creative constraints, within less time and for less money vs if we had created it via a traditional method.
"The cost savings from the production have been reinvested into local media platforms, extending our reach by an estimated 1.7 million views.
"The new campaign is live on NZ television networks, TV on demand and digital media platforms."
But is New Zealand law ready for this new world of completely AI-generated TV commercials?
While intellectual property lawyer Narly Kalupahana told Checkpoint the legislation had not kept up with the technology, there was enough in New Zealand law to clarify some aspects.
"The New Zealand Copyright Law does provide for a computer-generated work to have copyright, as long as a person is effectively instructing it properly," he said.
In New Zealand, art that is computer-generated belonged to "the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken would be the author", Kalupahana added.
He said most people would say that was the person that fed in the prompts to the AI model or the AI engine.
He also said it was a matter of time before it was tested in the courts.
The Fair Trading Act, Section 13, also covered misleading representations as to endorsement.
"So if you're creating an ad that's got a fake Brad Pitt, and someone would be confused into thinking, actually, that looks like Brad Pitt probably endorsed that or he's behind it, then it's quite likely that's a breach of the Fair Trading Act."
But in terms of general personality rights, "New Zealand doesn't have great laws to protect individual personality rights", Kalupahana said.
"The US is much further ahead than us. The US has actually codified personality rights, so a person has very clear rights to their image and the representation."
Kalupahana said there was also no requirement to declare whether something is AI-generated.
