The Wire with Castor

As artificial intelligence systems including the likes of chatbots and art generators become more advanced, their use has begun to pervade the political arena. 

Across the world, political leaders and parties including Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and now New Zealand’s own ACT Party, have used AI images to promote a certain political agenda or message. 

In the case of the ACT Party, an artificial stock image from Adobe AI titled “happy Māori couple sitting in a living room” was featured in a social media post underneath the tagline “Kiwis are saving over $150 per week on their mortgages since ACT entered government”.

Producer Sara spoke with University of Otago Media, Film and Communications Professor, Dr Olivier Jutel about this new era of AI political content. 

To begin, she asked him to discuss why ACTs recent social media post was so problematic.

Kilmar Ábrego García, a man legally in the United States, was wrongly deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador earlier this month. 

The Trump administration refuses to bring Ábrego García back to the United States despite a Supreme Court ruling stating that Trump must “facilitate” this process.

Wire Host Caeden spoke to Associate Professor Jean Lantz Reisz from the Gould School of Law at the University of Southern California about Ábrego García's removal from the US and what this means for the rule of law.

UNICEF Aotearoa recently put out a response to the child poverty statistics in the government’s Child and Youth Strategy report.

UNICEF have said that the coalition government lacked policies to make meaningful change to address the number of Tamariki living in material hardship and called for specific investment into programmes that would materially improve children’s lives.

I spoke to UNICEF Aotearoa’s Senior Policy and Advocacy Advisor, Clare McLennan-Kissel, about the report and their calls to the government to address the number of Tamariki living in material hardship.

The Accommodation Supplement is one of Aotearoa’s primary social housing support programmes.

It provides weekly financial assistance to lower-income households struggling with housing costs.

A recent study by University of Auckland has revealed that the supplement is failing to ease housing stress, with renters receiving the subsidy spending more of their income on rent than those who don’t, across all income brackets.

Producer Amani spoke to University of Auckland Associate Property Professor Edward Yiu to find out more about this research and to see what advice he has for student renters.