What happened
Police documents released to RNZ under the Official Information Act show investigators used AI and translation tools in risky ways that broke police rules. In one case about 350,000 lines of Chinese-language material from an investigation were put through Google Translate, a platform not approved for that use. Separately, a six-month trial of the Whisper AI system to triage intercepted Mandarin-language calls was halted in March 2025 after officers repeatedly breached its restrictions, including a ban on transcribing English audio. It later restarted with tighter controls. Police documents note Whisper was ruled out for Māori and Pacific languages because of high error rates. There is no evidence the material was made public or used by the providers.