LAST UPDATE | 15 hrs ago

MINISTER FOR MEDIA Patrick O’Donovan has said X is not responsible for making child sexual abuse images, but that responsibility lies with the people who use the website to make the images.

His comments have been heavily criticised by fellow TDs and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.

The minister made the remarks today while speaking to Virgin Media News at the Young Scientist convention in Dublin.  

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s a choice of a person to make these images,” the minister said, adding that technology is moving too fast for law to keep pace with.

“And obviously, as you can see here from the [Young Scientist] exhibition, technology is moving so fast, and the use of the artificial intelligence is being developed at such a phenomenal rate that even if the law is changed in relation to this particular aspect of it, there’s no doubt about it, the technological advancements that are being made by young people and people that are not so young is far faster than the way in which law can be able to respond,” O’Donovan said.

Asked why Government ministers are continuing to use a website that is generating child sexual abuse images, Minister O’Donovan responded: “Well, look, that’s a personal choice for people.”

“Every government department will obviously make its own decision with regard to that, but it’s not necessarily the app that’s making the images.

“It’s people using the app that’s making the images,” O’Donovan said.

The standalone version of Grok, which is also integrated into X (formerly known as Twitter), is currently number one on the Apple app-store charts for Ireland.

Dublin Rape Crisis Centre condemns Grok

Pushing back on this narrative, Rachel Morrogh, chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) argued that responsibility does lie with X as a platform.

“X facilitates misogyny and harm and hateful content. The fact that Grok is generating harmful content means that it is X that should be held responsible,” Morrogh said.

She said it is good that there’s been a “new awakening” amongst politicians in Ireland to the harm on X after Grok has generated content that’s at “complete odds with the government’s own aims to tackle sexual violence”.

DRCC is among the organisations and politicians leaving X over the controversy.

Government backbencher and member of the Oireachtas Media Committee Pádraig O’Sullivan also disagreed with the minister’s view of the issue.

“Individual users are responsible but the platform allows for it to happen.

“This is a bit like saying we don’t need to invest in safer roads and safer cars, just deal with drivers,” O’Sullivan said.

Meanwhile, Social Democrats TD Sinéad Gibney, who is also a member of the Oireachtas Media Committee, said the Minister’s attitude to this issue is not acceptable.

She accused him and the rest of the Government of “wringing their hands” over the matter.

She said that while users of the AI tool bear responsibility, so too does X, as the platform that has created the tool and made it available.

“If we allow tech companies responsible for the creation of illegal and harmful content to evade liability for crimes, we are paving the way for it to happen again and again on x and elsewhere,” she said.

The Dublin Rathdown TD accused the Government of “cosying up to” Big Tech because they “bring in tax and jobs”.

Gibney said the EU as a whole was also at fault for “capitulating” to Big Tech lobbying in Brussels and Dublin so that they can “have free rein on development of products which we know are harmful to society”.

Related Reads

Domestic abuse charity Women's Aid has left X over AI sexual abuse image controversy

Irish laws

Patrick O’Donovan said making non-consensual sexual images of people is “reprehensible”, and he encouraged people “in the heaviest possible way” not to do so.

He said junior minister for artificial intelligence Niamh Smyth is looking at the issue and laws will be updated if they need to be.

“Any criminal sanction with regard to this is, in the first instance, embedded in Coco’s law, which is a matter for the Minister for Justice,” O’Donovan said.

‘Coco’s Law’ is an Irish law, named in memory of cyberbullying victim Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox, which criminalises sharing or threatening to share intimate images without a person’s consent or with intent to cause them harm.

Elon Musk’s AI bot Grok started flooding the social media platform X with non-consensual sexual images of women, children and men late in December.

The phenomenon began after Grok rolled out an “edit image” button, a tool which was designed to give users the power to modify online images by inputting specific prompts.

The European Commission has said it is “very seriously looking” into complaints about the tool in what is the latest controversy surrounding the use of AI to create non-consensual sexual images of women and children.

The Irish government claims that existing domestic laws are adequate to deal with the issue, but opposition parties have argued that there are loopholes that need to be closed. 

The Attorney General is currently exploring whether additional laws are needed.

With reporting from Stephen McDermott