Media minister denies Government 'sitting on its hands' over X's Grok nudification apps
The media minister has rejected the idea the Government is "sitting on its hands" in relation to nudification apps.X's Grok tool has been used to generate explicit images of women and children through what has been described as a “nudification” function. X had told AI minister Niamh Smyth last week that functionality allowing Grok to remove clothing from images of people has been disabled worldwide.However, users have reported in recent days the app can still be instructed to sidestep that disabling using various prompts.Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris met with a number of ministers to discuss the laws relating to the generation and sharing of sexual abuse images on social media in the wake of the scandal around Grok and other AI apps which have been used to create nude photographs of adults and children.On Wednesday, media minister Patrick O'Donovan said the Government had been proactive on the issue and said it would not be appropriate for him to comment on the outlook of media regulator Comisiún na Mean, which told Monday's meeting a wholesale switching off of X would not be practical."I don't accept the assertion that we're sitting on our hands," Mr O'Donovan said."Over the last number of years, we have enabled a number of key pieces of legislation, including Coco's Law and other legislation with regard to child sex abuse and pornography in more general terms. We have acted in advance of ever having had to contend with this issue... there were people who believed at the time that, for instance, the advent of Coco's law was seen as wokeism and that we didn't need it, and that it was seen as being too far to the left and things like that. "We're now very fortunate that we have the legislation that we have in the statute book." He said it was also very fortunate there was an independent regulator "and independent regulators must be allowed to be independent"."It is completely inappropriate for the minister with responsibility for the legislation around the regulator to then interfere and tell the regulator what to do."Mr O'Donovan said there was a live Garda investigation into the issue and he was "disappointed" a European Commission report had not come already.Meanwhile, children's minister Norma Foley said her department’s use of social media site X remained “under review”, despite her being “shocked and appalled” by its AI tool being used to sexualise images of children. The Government has been under fire recently for the use of X by its various departments and agencies, despite the perceived toxicity of its discourse and, more recently, revelations regarding Grok. The Department of Children holds joint responsibility for the Growing Up in Ireland survey, together with the CSO, which monitors the lives and milestones of a cohort of people at five-year intervals from childhood as a reflection on the evolution of Irish society.Queried as to her department’s use of X to publicise that survey, and its own use of the same site — including the posting of images of young children as recently as mid-January — Ms Foley declined to say whether or not she considered use or the department’s presence on X appropriate in the current climate. “The department is keeping the use of X under review,” she said, noting X recently released a statement saying “new measures” were to be implemented to prevent Grok from "generating sexualised images of women and children in jurisdictions where it is illegal”.She said she was “shocked and appalled that AI assistant tools were being used to generate harmful and illegal ‘deepfake’ sexual images featuring children”.
