Ireland hears fast-track calls for deepfake bill following X’s Grok controversy

There are calls in Ireland to fast track legislation criminalizing deepfakes after controversy over Elon Musk’s Grok technology.

In April, the Protection of Voice and Image Bill was introduced by Fianna Fáil politician Malcolm Bryne, which seeks to criminalize the harmful misuse of someone’s voice or image.

Now there are calls to accelerate the Bill’s passing following concern prompted by Elon Musk’s AI tool Grok being used to create sexually inappropriate images of women and children.

Elon Musk’s social media platform X, which prominently features Grok, has drawn public and political condemnation for a surge in images that feature digitally undressed minors. Women have also been targeted as intimate non-consensual deepfaked images have spread.

“The deliberate misuse of someone’s image or voice without their consent for malign purposes should be a criminal offence,” said Byrne, as reported by The Irish Times. “This Bill is a useful baseline and we need to move quickly to address this problem.”

It is already a criminal offence in Ireland to share intimate images without consent and to generate child sex abuse imagery, but the new Bill would address genAI. If passed, it would criminalize those who “knowingly exploit another person’s name, image, voice or likeness without consent” particularly with intent to harm or deceive.

Ireland’s Attorney General is examining the proposal. The country’s child protection rapporteur Caoilfhionn Gallagher, in an interview with RTÉ radio, said that the harassment and depth of feeling victims of “nudify” images can experience is “equivalent” to that of genuine images given how realistic AI-generated videos and pictures can be.

Gallagher drew attention to whether Ireland’s protections holding social media platforms to account are sufficiently robust and the disproportionate impact nudify apps have on women and girls.

Gallagher said there is growing international unease about whether current safeguards are adequate, noting that most legal and policy protections around the world focus on the individuals who generate such images rather than on the platforms and tools that enable their creation.

According to Gallagher, Ireland’s existing legislation, such as section five of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 and Coco’s Law, is similarly centered on the actions of individual users. In her view, part of the challenge is that this should also be treated as a product safety issue, questioning whether the tools that enable image generation should themselves be prohibited or subject to stricter regulation, rather than focusing solely on the users who exploit them.

Ireland may also be taking a leaf out of Australia’s book as it proposes the introduction of identity verification for social media accounts and a restriction on young users. Set to assume the EU presidency in July, Ireland has made child online safety a key issue.

Article Topics

children  |  deepfakes  |  generative AI  |  Grok  |  Ireland  |  legislation  |  social media