The media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, has said that tougher laws may be needed relating to AI-generated sexual imagery.
Appearing before the Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence, Jeremy Godfrey, the Executive Chair of Coimisiún na Meán, suggested changes to the EU AI Act to prohibit companies and developers from deploying AI systems capable of producing intimate imagery of real people without their consent, or which are capable of producing child sexual abuse material.
"At the moment, it is not a criminal offence under Irish law to deploy an AI system to be used in that way," Mr Godfrey said.
"Using it in that way is a criminal offence but the AI Act bites not on the users of AI, not on the people who are putting the prompts in, the AI Act puts obligations on the developers and deployers of AI models and AI systems," he added.
Mr Godfrey also suggested extending the scope of "high-risk systems" under the AI Act to include a wider range of chatbots and generative AI tools such as AI therapists.
Asked by Social Democrats TD Sinead Gibney about the powers that Coimisiún na Meán currently has, Mr Godfrey said that the commission is not a censor and that it does not have the powers to order the immediate takedown of content.
The Oireachtas AI Committee met today to examine issues around deepfakes and consent, in the wake of the Grok controversy which saw people using the AI tool to generate and share sexualised images of adults and children.
Data Protection Commissioner Dr Des Hogan also appeared before the committee hearing.
Asked about Government plans for age verification for social media access, Dr Hogan said a technical solution does need to be found to address this difficult question.
"From the privacy side of things a concern is that age assurance does not provide additional means for companies to track, locate, and use individual personal data," Dr Hogan said.
"To solve one problem for the child, you don't want to create another problem for the child, particularly with digital identities lasting for life," he added.
Dr Hogan said that some meetings with the Government have happened in relation to its age verification plans but he added that there is "a bit of a way to go".
Both Dr Hogan and Mr Godfrey agreed that recruiting technical experts for their organisations can be difficult because there is competition with the private sector when it comes to attracting talent.
Last week, the Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced an investigation into X, the parent company of Grok, over the generation and sharing of sexualised images.
Dr Hogan told the committee that, as with all its inquiries, it is the DPC's intention to conduct a thorough, swift and fair inquiry into the matter.
He also said it is essential that the DPC remains appropriately resourced and fully equipped to meet its regulatory objectives.
OpenAI, Microsoft and X declined invitations to appear before today's committee hearing but representatives from Google did attend.
People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy asked the representatives if Google's AI tools were helping to undermine the distinction between truth and reality and were assisting in the proliferation of fake news, disinformation and hate.
Miriam Estrin, Senior Policy Manager at Google, said the company has many years of experience of addressing low quality, spam content on search, on YouTube and across platforms.
"This new generation of AI technology can bring immense creativity and incredible new pieces of content, and it can also bring the other kind and for that we will be relying on our many years of experience," Ms Estrin said.
