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2 Aug 2025

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30 percent of people seeking help are doing so for the first time - NZ Food Network charity
The New Zealand Food Network says even families in dual-income households are having to reach out.

Country Life: Harnessing the power of plants to combat vineyard threats
Are some grapevines better at defending themselves from pests? Trials are being conducted to find out.

Kaikohe Blood & Fire: How kickboxing transformed the lives of troubled men
International Film Festival documentary follows kickboxers' transformative journey.

Rotorua principals receive life memberships for decades of leadership
Garry de Thierry, Phil Palfrey and Colin Watkins have received life memberships.

Does this ad about baldness offend you?
"You look better bald... said no-one ever." That's the sentence on a digital billboard in Auckland that's dividing views with one critic calling it cruel and "body shaming".

CISO report: AI, supply chain, & insider risks reshape security
CISO report reveals AI, supply chain, and insider threats prompt security leaders to adopt offensive strategies and continuous testing for better resilience.

Wairoa to transport landfill waste to Omarunui with remaining cyclone funds
Wairoa to truck waste to Hawke’s Bay’s Omarunui landfill

Wayne Brown aims for re-election, targets councillors in Auckland race
ANALYSIS: Twelve candidates are running for the mayoralty, down from 23 in 2022.

Tauranga CBD businesses slam paid parking, call for free options
The council delayed the start of paid parking to explore resident permits.

ChatGPT is crushing all other AI chatbots, and the numbers prove it
It might seem that “ChatGPT” is all you ever hear about when discussing AI chatbots, also known as LLMs. As it turns out, that’s reflected in the real world, too. Statcounter, which tracks the market share of operating systems, browsers, social media sites, and more, has begun tracking the number of sessions by users who visit artificial intelligence sites like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude AI, Microsoft Copilot, and more. The winner, not surprisingly, is ChatGPT, by an enormous margin: over 80 percent and climbing, which coincides with our own chatbot tests. Statcounter began tracking the statistics in March, and they’ve roughly remained the same since then: ChatGPT absolutely dominates, with a cluster of smaller AI chatbots below. So far, the only major change seems to have been Perplexity AI, which captured 16 percent of U.S. users in March, but has dropped to about 6 percent since then. Microsoft’s Copilot has risen, beginning at under 1 percent and now capturing about 10 percent of the market. For the U.S,, the Statcounter numbers break down as follows: in July, 80.22 percent of U.S. chatbot sessions went to ChatGPT, 9.51 percent to Copilot, 5.61 percent for Perplexity, 2.67 percent to Google Gemini, and 1.56 percent to Claude, with Deepseek capturing just 0.43 percent. Statcounter Though those numbers reflect the market share for U.S. users, the picture doesn’t differ that much when viewed from a worldwide perspective. There, ChatGPT’s market share rises to 82.69 percent, followed by Perplexity at 8.06 percent and Copilot (4.56 percent). Gemini (2.2 percent) and Deepseek (1.59 percent) captured the remainder of the sessions Statcounter tracked, with Claude bringing up the rear at 0.91 percent. To be fair, however, it’s not clear how Statcounter arrives at its numbers for tracking AI chatbots. In terms of sample size, Statcounter’s global statistics are based on an analysis of more than 5 billion page views on more than 1.5 million websites per month, the company says. Cookies on those 1.5 million sites can track which devices access them, what operating system they use, and so on. For estimating search engine results, Statcounter says that it uses those tracking cookies to determine if a user arrived from Google, Bing, or somewhere else. Still, one of the challenges with AI chatbots is that they’re not sending users anywhere else, which is worrying to content creators with the rise of features like Google’s AI Mode and AI-powered search. Statcounter representatives did not immediately answer a request for comment.

Liam Lawson struggles in Hungarian Grand Prix practice
The Kiwi hasn’t been able to keep the good vibes flowing on the back of his eighth-placed finish in Belgium last week.

Country Life: On the Farm
The latest regional wrap of conditions on farms and orchards around New Zealand.

Raw milk faithful keeps dairy farmers on the hop
It's a busy time of year for Stacey Faith, calving 300-plus cows, rearing their calves and keeping the Faith Farm's roadside milk dispensing outlet going, providing locals with milk fresh from the cows over the fence - with the cream on top.

Bergerson hoping for special weekend with Bradman and Bosson
Grand National carnival takes centre stage, but racing also welcomes back champion jockey.

Hawke’s Bay retailers could suffer after ban on card surcharges
'Why would the business owner want to pay for that when they can’t on-charge?'

On The Up: Awhi Trust helps Hastings youth thrive outside mainstream education
Awhi Trust supports rangatahi outside mainstream education in Hastings.

Sensitive data exposure rises with employee use of GenAI tools
A quarter of files and 4.37% of prompts shared with GenAI tools contained sensitive data, raising security risks as employees use more AI applications.