New Zealand has officially entered the AI spam call era, and the bots aren't even trying to hide it.
A Auckland resident received what appears to be one of the country's first openly AI-identified spam calls this week—a robocaller that introduced itself as "Ben," claimed to be an "AI agent," and represented some company the recipient can't even remember.
"I hung up as soon as I heard the words 'AI agent,'" the recipient posted on New Zealand's Reddit. "If this is the best AI can come up with, god help us."
Mate, when the spam bots start admitting they're spam bots, we've crossed into new territory.
The Transparency Paradox
What's remarkable here isn't that AI spam calls exist—they've been proliferating globally for months. It's that this one openly disclosed its artificial nature.
Most AI robocallers try to pass as human. They use natural-sounding voices, insert filler words ("um," "uh"), and mimic conversational patterns to avoid detection. The goal is to keep you on the line long enough to deliver the pitch.
But "Ben" apparently decided transparency was the strategy. Whether that's a compliance attempt (some jurisdictions are proposing laws requiring AI disclosure) or just terrible programming is unclear.
Either way, it didn't work. The call got terminated immediately.
Why Now, Why New Zealand
New Zealand has been relatively insulated from the worst of international spam call operations. The country's smaller population and geographic isolation have made it a less attractive target than larger markets like Australia, United States, or United Kingdom.
But AI changes the economics. Traditional spam call centers required human workers, phone banks, and coordination. AI systems scale infinitely at near-zero marginal cost. Once the software exists, calling one person or one million people costs basically the same.
That means even small markets like New Zealand become viable targets.
The Regulation Gap
New Zealand's Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act covers email and text spam, but phone call regulation is murkier. The Do Not Call Register exists, but enforcement is complaint-driven and struggles with international operations.
AI spam calls, often routed through VOIP services and international numbers, are even harder to police. By the time regulators investigate, the operation has moved.
Some countries are proposing AI-specific rules—requiring callers to disclose artificial identity, imposing penalties for deceptive AI use, or mandating telecom providers to implement better screening.
New Zealand hasn't moved on this yet. The Commerce Commission handles consumer protection, but AI spam calls are a recent phenomenon, and regulatory frameworks lag behind technology.
What You Can Do
The usual advice applies: don't engage, hang up immediately, block the number, report to the Do Not Call Register if it's a New Zealand number.
If an AI caller discloses its nature (like "Ben" did), that's actually useful—it removes any doubt about whether you're dealing with a legitimate human caller.
But the broader problem requires regulatory action. Telecom providers need better tools to identify and block spoofed numbers. Penalties for spam operations need to be severe enough to matter. And international cooperation is essential since most spam originates offshore.
The Future of Annoyance
AI spam calls are going to get worse before they get better. The technology is improving, costs are dropping, and the potential victim pool is every human with a phone number.
We're likely to see AI callers that sound perfectly human, adapt their pitch based on your responses, and use scraped personal data to seem credible. The days of obvious robocallers saying "I'm an AI agent named Ben" may be brief.
Mate, when the robots start calling you and can't even be bothered to pretend they're human, it's a sign that spam operations have industrialized to the point where they don't care about subtlety anymore.
New Zealand's got a choice: get ahead of this with smart regulation, or wait until every phone call from an unknown number is assumed to be a bot until proven otherwise.
The latter future sounds exhausting.
