New Zealand has spent the past year discussing how artificial intelligence should be regulated. A national AI strategy. A light-touch approach confirmed. No AI specific legislation.
Something else has been happening at the same time, and it has attracted almost no attention.
In March 2024 the New Zealand Law Society published guidance on generative AI for lawyers. It says firms should have a clear policy for all staff on how the firm uses it, and it covers confidentiality, privacy, hallucinations and procurement. The Law Society drew the guidance from the Law Society of England and Wales and adapted it for New Zealand. In November 2024 the Real Estate Authority followed with guidance for licensees, issued by its Registrar in accordance with the purposes of the Real Estate Agents Act 2008. Agencies should have policies and procedures covering AI use, and the REA is explicit that an error made by a generative AI tool does not excuse a licensee’s breach of their professional obligations. The REA guidance points licensees to the Law Society’s.
Then the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors went considerably further.
RICS released the first global professional standard for the responsible use of AI in surveying practice on 10 September 2025, effective 9 March 2026. Six months of notice, then a hard commencement. It binds RICS members and RICS-regulated firms worldwide, New Zealand included. So if your firm employs chartered surveyors, whether valuers, quantity surveyors or building surveyors, the obligation is already inside your business even if the firm itself is not regulated. Many of them took that credential long before AI was a question of practice. The obligation arrived afterwards.
It also does not deal in principles. It specifies artefacts.
A firm using AI in ways that materially affect its services must hold a written risk register, reviewed at least quarterly, and an AI use policy informed by it. It must tell clients in writing and in advance when AI will be used and for what purpose, and its terms of engagement must address which parts of the process involve AI, the extent of professional indemnity cover if available, and whether a client can opt out. Where AI automates outputs or produces volume, the firm must take randomised samples to assure quality. A named qualified surveyor must accept responsibility for any AI assisted written decision, so that someone can explain it afterwards.
Professional commentary since March has noted that this framework will inform how negligence claims against surveyors are assessed. That is the practical consequence. A firm that cannot produce the register, the policy or the samples has not simply missed a professional obligation. It may find its position weaker if something goes wrong.
None of this is legislation, even where a statutory regulator issued it. No New Zealand legislative process was involved in the RICS standard at any point, and even the Law Society guidance, produced here for New Zealand lawyers, was adapted from a British instrument.
Professional bodies also move faster than legislatures, and they follow one another. Law in March 2024. Real estate in November 2024. Surveying, mandatory, in 2026. The International Valuation Standards Council has published a paper on AI in valuation and sought feedback to inform future standard setting, and International Valuation Standards bind New Zealand valuers who belong to their institute. If your profession has a body that sets standards, the question is not whether it will address AI but when.
What makes this difficult for a board or a partnership is that these obligations do not arrive announced. They do not appear in legislative updates or regulatory bulletins. They arrive as a professional standard addressed to individual members, which means the person carrying the obligation and the people accountable for the firm need not be the same people.
Waiting for the government to decide what AI requires of you assumes the government will be the one to tell you. For a good many New Zealand firms, that decision has already been made somewhere else.