Explained: Ireland's online safety laws as concerns rise over Grok images

The safety of women and children online has continued to be a concern as the Grok AI tool on X has been criticised.

The AI tool on social media platform X has created sexualised images of women and children, creating deep fake images and videos of people.

This has led to calls for people to step away from the social media platform X, with Minister for Artificial Intelligence Niamh Smyth requesting a meeting with them.

Ms Smyth is among the politicans who have said they will consider leaving the site.

Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, Peter Burke, has said the Government would have to make a “decision collectively” about its use of the social media site X.

Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said he has posted for the last time on the site.

Irish law

It is illegal in Ireland to post a sexualised photo of someone online without their consent.

This includes sharing it without the consent of the person in the image. An intimate image is any type of image of a person who is naked or engaged in a sexual act.

It also includes any image claiming to be of an intimate part of a person’s body or an image of underwear covering that part of their body.

This is called Coco's Law, which was named after Nicole ‘Coco’ Fox, who took her own life aged 21 after being bullied online and abused physically for three years.

Under this offence, a person who is found guilty can be sentenced to up to seven years.

However, there have been calls for Ireland's online safety laws to go further.

Caoilfhionn Gallagher, the special rapporteur on child protection, said: "The harms from deep fake sexual abuse for the individuals depicted are equivalent to those from authentic images because, for victims, the videos feel real.

“Within Ireland, there are existing laws of relevance, particularly in relation to individual users. There's section five of the child trafficking and pornography act 1998. I don't like the term child pornography but that's the term that's used in the legislation. And, of course,there's Coco's Law from 2020.

“They're quite focused on the individual users. Now I know there's work being undertaken this week by the Attorney General's office to review the existing framework, and there's excellent work being undertaken by Coimisiún na Meán, who are speaking to the gardaí about these issues and also the European Commission.

“But the issue here is Ireland's not alone, and internationally there is a concern about the adequacy of the mechanisms for holding the platforms to account.

Women's Aid will stop using X because of the “unconscionable levels” of misogyny, racism and anti LGBT content on the platform.

The charity also called for the urgent implementation of legislation to ban such AI tools.