About us

Whakatere is Tautoru's guide to using AI safely. This page sets out who is behind it, how we work, where we give a view, and what we promise you about the way we get there. If you are deciding whether to trust what you read here, this is the page that should help you decide.

Why this guide exists

The advice most people are given about AI tools is either "don't use them" or "they're fine": neither sourced, neither current, neither distinguishing one tool, plan, or kind of information from another. Regulators and courts have issued guidance, but it is written for a level of technical literacy most people do not have, and it dates quickly. The result is that careful people avoid useful tools out of vague fear, and incautious people put confidential material into the wrong place without realising.

Whakatere fills that gap. It tells you, for each tool and each plan, what the provider's own terms and the applicable rules actually say — sourced to the primary documents, dated, and kept current as the tools change.

What this guide is

Whakatere is a plain-language account of the AI tools you are likely to come across, and of what is and is not safe to put into them. It is written for both lawyers and members of the public. We write in plain language and explain our terms, so that nothing here turns on a word you do not already know.

We tell you what the tools are, how they handle your information, and what the people who make the rules — the providers, the regulators, the courts — have actually said. We do not tell you what to do. That last step is yours.

What this guide is not

This is guidance on using AI tools. It is not legal advice. We describe how the tools work and what the rules say; we do not advise you on your own situation. If your question is really about your legal position, that is a question for you and your own advisers, and we will say so when we reach that line.

Who edits it

Whakatere is edited by Josh McBride, a senior barrister at Richmond Chambers in Auckland. He practises in commercial litigation and arbitration, and is among the more technically engaged senior practitioners at the New Zealand bar on the use of AI in legal work.

Every assessment on this site — every colour in the grid, every signed view — has been reviewed and signed off by the editor before it is published. Nothing here is generated and posted unchecked.

How we assess a tool

For each tool we look at what it actually is, who makes it, and — the part most people never see — how its behaviour changes depending on which version, or plan, you are on. The same product can treat your information very differently on a free personal account than on a company's enterprise account. We set that out plainly.

At the centre of each tool's page is a grid. Down one side are eight kinds of information a person might want to put into a tool, from fully public material to legally privileged documents. Across the top are the plans. Each square tells you what the provider's terms and the applicable rules say about using that kind of information, on that plan:

• Green — on the default settings, the terms and rules permit it.
• Amber — permitted, but only with particular settings, redactions, or an added agreement. The square tells you which.
• Red — not permitted on this plan without changing something: a different plan, a different tool, or a different way of working.
• Black — a separate restriction applies no matter which tool you use: a court order, an undertaking, a statutory prohibition.

Every square links to the source it comes from. The colour is our summary of what the sources say, not our opinion of what is wise. Click into any square and you can read the reasoning, follow the sources yourself, and see when we last checked them. You never have to take our word for it.

Where we give a view

Most of the guide is description: here is what the sources say, you decide. Now and then, on a question where the facts leave a real judgment open, we will give our own view. When we do, it sits in its own clearly-marked box headed "Where Tautoru lands", and it opens by telling you it is a view and not a settled position.

We keep our opinions in that box for a reason. The facts on the rest of the page stand on their own and are sourced; our view is offered separately, so you can take the facts and leave the opinion if you would rather. Our view never changes a colour in the grid. The colour follows the sources, not us.

Our sourcing promise

• Every factual statement is tied to a primary source — the provider's own terms, a court's own guidance, the actual rule — not to someone else's summary of it.
• Because providers change their terms without notice, we cite the primary source, record the date we checked it, and lodge a permanent dated copy of it (see below), so the record does not vanish when a page is quietly edited.
• If we cannot establish something from the sources, we say so. "We could not confirm this from the provider's published terms as at this date" is an honest answer, and we will give it rather than guess.

A permanent record of every source

An ordinary web link is a weak foundation for anything that must be trusted. Links break — pages move, sites are redesigned, documents are quietly withdrawn — and even when a link still works, the page behind it may have changed, so you can no longer see what it actually said on the day it mattered. For guidance and terms that change without notice, that is not good enough.

So we built a curated archive. For every source we cite, we lodge a permanent, dated copy with Perma.cc — the legal-citation archive built and maintained by the Harvard Law School Library (through its Library Innovation Lab), and relied on by courts, law reviews and law schools worldwide. That Perma.cc copy is our citation of record: a fixed snapshot that always resolves to the exact version we relied on, on the date we relied on it, even after the original is edited or taken down.

We regard this as the only honest way to keep a clear record in a field moving this fast. You never have to take our word for what a court, regulator or provider said. You can open the dated copy and see exactly what we saw. (Where a source already has a stable, permanent home that will not move — legislation and reported case law — we cite that directly, and spend the archive on the material most likely to change.)

We date everything, and we keep it current

The technology moves faster than any rulebook. So every statement carries a date, we name the versions we are talking about, and we review every page on a monthly cycle, and sooner when a provider makes a material change. If a page falls behind its review, we flag that openly rather than letting old information look current. You will always see when a page was last checked.

Our independence

We take no money from any tool we cover. There are no affiliate links, no referral fees, and no paid placement anywhere on this site, and if that ever changes, we will tell you before it does. No provider gets to see or approve what we publish about them. Every tool is held to the same standard and profiled the same way.

If we get something wrong

Tell us. There is a contact address at the foot of every page. We check what you raise against the same sourcing standard we hold ourselves to, and if we are wrong we fix it — openly, with a note of what changed and when. We do not quietly delete our mistakes; the record of the correction stays. If an error could affect a decision you make about your information, we treat fixing it as urgent.

• Email: contact@tautoru.ai
• Corrections, questions, or to suggest a tool we should cover: the same address. We read everything.

Who we are

Tautoru is a New Zealand platform for navigating complex decisions. Whakatere is its first module, edited by Josh McBride, barrister, of Richmond Chambers, Auckland.