"“no other right that trumps the right of a child to be protected”. He added that “no amount of convincing me that data protection is more important than child protection is ever going to win out”."
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is a Trojan horse. If they cared about children they would look after the hospitals, homeless children, etc. This needs pressure to ensure the responsibility falls on the platform and not as an excuse to implement digital id.
Any posts or comments that attack, threaten or insult a person or group; on areas including — but not limited to — national origin, ethnicity, colour, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, social prejudice, and disability may be removed.
Maddening how they’re pushing through (and voting to approve) that EU Chat Control bill to destroy your digital privacy and security rights - based on CSAM perl clutching.
Yet, when one of the largest corporate digital media outlets distributes CSAM generated by an AI software they explicitly created, own, and programmed to do exactly what it has done - shit out CSAM - fucking crickets from the government.
They really wanna suck Elon Musk’s corporate cock for a money shot, don’t they. And it shows you they really don’t give a fuck about CSAM at all.
X is absolutely responsible for this by putting out such a tool that can easily be abused. Then again X should be shut down as its Musks Regressive Shitehawk propaganda tool now. Really the ignorance and stupidity of this government lately is really getting worse, they're out of touch on everything atm.
That's the bollocks about AI. It's running around skimming all this copyright and personal material . . . "play me a tune that's like the beatles" "take the clothes of this picture of my classmate" . . . These techie libertarians want us to have no rights to nothing and pay money to play with our own sheit.
To play devil's advocate, if you want to share something on TV or the radio, you need agreement of the management and the operators, but for social media anyone can post anything whenever
This isn't just people posting pictures they've done themselves, though. This is the app itself creating and posting these pictures. It 100% needs the agreement of the management. If I were put in charge of X The Everything App, I would shut down this feature immediately, because that would be within my power.
It's part of the specific nature of social media. Historically there were various legal issues surrounding things such as a physical message board, so if I put up a note on the golf club bulletin board that u/dustaz didn't play a foul ball or whatever golf shit annoys them questions might arise.
Online communication is both tool and broadcaster, in a way very few other industries are.
To use an analogy, nobody says cameras should be banned because they could be used to make child pornography, we recognise that the person using the camera is to blame.
You cannot realistically treat online entities the same way as old-fashioned social media, and you'll never be able to get it perfectly correct.
Musk has explicitly pitched GROK as the 'edgier' less-PC AI chatbot - he has actively livetweeted his process of demanding it allign with him more politically over time, which is what cranks like him mean when they bemoan wokeness or political bias; they are just annoyed its not biased towards their slant.
With that comes things like the 'nudify' aspect of GROK's image manipulation features. It is a FEATURE, not a bug. It is something Musk likes even more now because it "triggers" the people he dislikes. It is absolutely, categorically a selling point of GROK, and the X platform in general. This apologia is absolutely pathetic.
2026 is going to be a landmark year for the destruction of idea we live in a rules/decency-based society - and especially that our politicians (be they Irish or at the EU level) do so too. In a fair, reasonable society, this issue would have been dealt with two days ago. But they will not act on X or GROK because the US explicitly does not want its tech giants to be restricted in any way, shape or form. So despite the obvious moral wrongness of the situation to everyone and their dog; we'll keep getting mealy-mouthed SHITE like this as an excuse.
It doesn't matter if it's this issue, or Shannon airport, or condemnations of US interventionalism; there is zero point in us, the little people, actually debating these things on Reddit cos the reality is that the economic power in the world, the US, decides what is 'right' and our lads just go along with it.
I do agree to an extent, and no fan of Musks by any means. But i also think there is argument of how people are using. Maybe not fair comparison but you cant blame pen companies for how people use their pens
That’s a genuinely idiotic comparison not just unfair. If you want a true comparison it would be like one person asking another to draw CSAM material for them and claiming the person who drew it holds no responsibility.
Ah yeah AI is just a 'pen' when you bootlickers want it to be but it's a technological revolution capable of unprecedented wonders the next day when you want to pump the bubble even larger. Musk and Thiel want AI to be considered an unspeakable technological masterpiece capable of anything you can dream of but then when the slightest hint of responsibility for the shit it pumps out suddenly it's just a pen. Would you listen to yourself.
And the people who own the app & the AI are benefitting financially from this creation & dissemination of child sexual abuse images.
Section 5(1)(f) of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (as amended) makes it a criminal offence to knowingly facilitate the production or distribution of sexualised images of children.
The government (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael & the various Independents) has just decided that they actually want to continue to support the production of child sexual abuse images & pretend there's nothing they can do.
Honestly, the lot of them are looking like suspicious perves now.
He didn’t say the actual headline.
See what he actually said.
I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond.
And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
You're right. But ... he definitely absolved the platform from being the issue, and put it onto the people using it. He stated that departments and individuals in public services are free to use this platform, this ignored the overall question of a platform that has a CSAM and illegal porn creation facility on by default.
For instance, if the public servant who tried to set up Ming with pictures of another politician, the platform today would create an illegal (by our digital laws) image and distribute it across the platform. This should not be a personal choice, this should be the vanguard for applying existing laws to digital platform, and not hiding behind the lack of AI specific legilation.
I agree with your points totally.
Fair criticism based on what he said.
But the point is the “story” (more headline & half sentence) framed it differently as hate click bait.
And folks commented accordingly, that he’s defending child exploitation.. CP etc, which he didn’t, in fact it was the opposite.
If you go down this path then all sorts of criminal content or crimes committed by AI will go unpunished while the creators reap the rewards. And of course this is what they are planning on.
This guy’s logic: let’s violate everyone’s right to privacy to “protect children” online, but when it comes to actually protecting children online, his excuse is it’s not the company’s fault for allowing users to generate CSAM and store it on their servers.
It’s the classic “guns don’t kill people” argument. Technically true but they’re tools that expressly allow harm to befall another person, just like Musk’s Naz-AI allows child porn to be created (which is expressly against the law here).
He didn’t say the actual headline.
See what he actually said.
I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond.
And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
He said: "It’s people using the app that’s making the images”
Sure, he didn't say the headline verbatim, but he is clearly avoiding condemning X, implying they're not responsible for the content their own specific product feature is generating on their platform.
Be interesting so to see if they take action against this AI porn / girlfriend apps that are allegedly being targeted at kids or do they give that a pass too.
No it won't. Hell get voted back in, along with the rest. This should be a national scandal in itself (and a bigger one again when factoring in again his saying he does not care about the law when it comes to removing people's online privacy "to protect the children).
Instead, it'll be out of the news cycle before the weekend is up. It will be interesting to see if one single article is published in a major outlet on the hypocrisy and just how disgusting this is, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
He didn’t say the actual headline.
See what he actually said.
I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond.
And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
This is insane. If a person buys a pencil and paper and draw CSAM, that's on the user, as they are the one who has created it. If a person downloads photoshop and creates CSAM, that's on the user too - they are the one who has created it. In both those scenarios, if they were requested to do so by someone else, it still falls on them as the creator.
In the scenario with Grok AI, the "user" is actually the requester. The actual "creator" is the AI itself. This is blatantly obvious to anyone who has used one of these image generation AIs. Sure, go after the person requesting the content. But DEFINITELY go after the person creating the content too, which in this case is the X / Twitter corporation and its AI.
When it’s paper and pencil, you’re saying those are simply the tools, and when it’s photoshop you’re saying photoshop is just a tool, but when it’s an image neural net you’re saying it’s no longer a tool. I don’t understand your reasoning there, unless you believe the image neural net is actually sentient
Because the neural net is the one creating the image.
In my first two examples, a human conceives the image, a human executes the image, a human controls every pixel, every element. The human is the creator. Photoshop (if used) is just a passive tool for the human to create the image.
With generative AI, that causal chain is broken completely. The user does not create anything, but merely provides a request. Then the system interprets the request, synthesizes brand new imagery, including deciding on composition, anatomy, pose, lighting, and renders entirely new pixels that did not exist before.
This isn't a user creating something, it's a user commissioning something. Surely the difference is obvious? The algorithm doesn't need to be sentient or morally culpable for this to be the case.
I think what you’re saying is fair enough but I believe the true author is the person who obtained an image generation tool and used it to the generate the imagery. I believe this is the most rational and the most legally coherent way to look at it.
It gets tricky as well because any multimodal generative AI model has a non-zero probability of producing explicit imagery given a prompt. Alignment tuning minimises the probability of this drastically. Furthermore, any open source generative AI model could be fine-tuned to produce such imagery, some may require a lot of fine tuning and some might not. Some might just require prompt “jail breaking”; tricking the model into generating explicit imagery despite its alignment tuning. Legislating against one model and not others involves drawing an arbitrary line somewhere. Much more legally straightforward to just prosecute the individual
You can and should put guardrails to prevent harmful content generation. Any responsible company is doing that. Twitter failed to stop something easily preventable and did so for profit.
You’re saying there are no guardrails at all against that kind of content? I doubt that or we would’ve seen this article a long time ago. What’s probably happened is these vile individuals found a way to jailbreak the X model against its alignment, probably easier to do with that model since it happily produces pornographic images. The only feasible solution for this would be to ban any model that can produce any kind of pornographic imagery
How depressing to know that the production of CSAM isn't a red line for politicians. Makes you wonder if the red line even exists. Cowardly and shameful load of c*nts.
Yeah, he's from my neck of the woods and he's always been a bollox. Ironically enough he's a pro-lifer too but clearly doesn't give a shit about children once they're out of the womb
It's actually people's jobs to produce illicit images on LLMs. The fact the Grok was able to churn out such pictures is a failure of the company, the users expose and abuse it.
They have no way of catching anyone who does create these horrific images. And even on the off chance that they did, the perpetrators would just get a suspended sentence and walk free.
The only way to protect children from this would be to massively fine X for allowing this content or better yet, ban the site outright. But the Government are too fond of brown envelopes from big tech companies to give a shit.
What??? X and Musk are 100% responsible for this. They are able to control any part of their own platform. They can police and monitor their own platform. They can stop their own shitty AI from making CP on their own platform and they can kick the users trying to make it off their own platform.
wild that they are forcing digital IDs on but allowing twitter to do what they want. Not sure if this guy is a just coward or a legit danger, but this is exactly why politicians excluding themselves from Chat Control is a huge red flag.
So Elon Musk is allowed to make an AI that generates CSAM and it's not their fault but they want to add a bunch of restrictions to citizens to 'protect the children'?
Just say how much Musk donated to your retirement fund.
Why would any app/service possibly require this capability other than nefarious reasons?
Insane that a proper stance can’t be taken on this, no issue trying to legislate for hate speech though when it’s aimed at them and their families.
Also fuck any weird creepy losers that are actually sat at home doing this, honestly just go find the nearest cliff and take a nose dive, do the world a favour.
This fella genuinely hasn't a notion has he? and the minister for AI who said something like I know nothing about it but sure I'll learn on the job when she was appointed, be grand.
AI isn't smart, it's not creative. It reconfigures what it has seen before through training and spits it back out. Yes transformed into something "new" by combining various bits of data, but bits of data it has seen before.
I don't know if it's still the case for all AI models but recently enough AIs couldn't produce a picture of a full glass of wine. It didn't matter what you told it to do, "fill it to the brim", "fill it so it's overflowing", etc. All it could do was produce a picture of a glass of wine with a generous amount of wine in it, but not full to the brim. No matter the follow up prompts, it couldn't do it. That's because there are very few images of glasses of wine that are full to the brim on the internet, it's just not a thing people take photos of. So AI image generation doesn't know how to do it.
I just tried it there and the first AI generator I used still can't do it.
So all this blathering on about wine glasses leads me to this. I haven't seen the images that X will generate and I've no intention to look for them to help answer this question. Were the generated images just reconfigured and scaled down versions of images of adults, or not? If not, what was the AI trained on, and why isn't that being investigated? How certain are we that this isn't just about the generation of CSAM, but also the use and commercial exploitation of it? If X aren't responsible for the generation (which is bullshit) then are they responsible for what it was trained on?
I don't buy the publisher / platform distinction being made here. If someone posted CSAM to twitter, the company wouldn't be liable for "publishing" it, but that's not what this is about. They've created a software tool, which they are willing and able to control and reprogram as needed; they've previously used that control to make it more right-wing, and to make it worship Elon Musk. They have the ability to make it refuse to generate CSAM, and they are choosing not to do that.
Wait so are we going to have an open web at last. No isp blocks on URLs if we're not holding hosts responsible. No website taken down for copyright material uploaded
"The minister argued that technology is moving too fast for laws to keep pace." Warned for ages about AI needing to be regulated, even Musk was on about it years ago before his brain turned to complete soup. If technology is moving too fast for you then resign as you're not fit for your job.
"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.
Elon Musk could put an end to it within the hour. CNN reported today that "Internally at xAI, Musk has pushed back against guardrails for Grok".
Elon is offering up an app that lets child predators sexually harass others, for their own sick titillation, at the push of a button. It's absurd to say that he bears no blame because it's the users who are choosing to push the button. If he wanted to, he could easily stop them by making changes to his app.
They absolutely fucking are responsible for letting their own AI generate such images
Please remember what this man said about Twitter/X next time he tries to claim digital ID and blanket age bans from entire platforms are about keeping kids safe.
Which is already the case - remember the Irish guy who got extradited to the US because he hosted a website that paedos used but he didn't actually upload anything explicit himself?
Anyone involved with Grok should get significant jail time for this.
We all joked about the "make crime illegal" fella but the generation of this kind of content is plainly illegal and a Minister is denying that fact. Given the gravity of the crimes we're talking about, that is sickening.
He didn’t say the actual headline.
See what he actually said.
I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond.
And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
The headline is not misleading, I've read his words and he says that X are not responsible for generating the images and its users are. What are you on about
He didn’t say the actual headline.
See what he actually said.
I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond.
And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
How about as a social experiment you actually click and read the story. see what he said. then come back and criticize the flaws in the policy and application of safe guards. but just shouting hate based on a headline is actually what the likes of Musk wants and makes online spaces worse.
The whole government has been in favour of the hands off approach with tech companies while making the population responsible, but Patrick O'Donovan is an special dope. The sooner he's away from politics the better.
K what do other AI do when you ask them to make images like that? You have to phrase things as hypotheticals for chatGPT to write some jokes about real people coz the creators are afraid of defamation. Just regulate the damn thang or shut it down ffs
He needs to be dragged for this and never be forgotten about what he said, this is bending down to Musk and allowing a platform to willfully provide CSAM with zero ramifications.
Complete 180 on social media platforms expected to moderate their extreme content.
Musk's AI platform has just been given the all clear to produce porn of everyone without issue, it's now only if users get caught..... fucking marvellous deterrent.
If Musk doesn't have to censor CSAM why would he or any other platform be expected to moderate extreme content now?
A pathetic response. Especially as it has come out Musk intentionally pushed his team to remove guardrails on Grok leading to many of xAi safety staff to quit.
Internally at xAI, Musk has pushed back against guardrails for Grok, one source with knowledge of the situation at xAI told CNN. Meanwhile, his xAI’s safety team, already small compared to its competitors, lost several staffers in the weeks leading up to the explosion of “digital undressing.”
Rubbish. X is knowingly and willing providing a medium for distribution of such images for profit. If an individual were the be caught doing that they would be prosecuted and rightly so.
If anybody created a website that hosted these images they would be arrested and the website would be taken down immediately.
Not Musk. The world is too cowardly to stand up to him. The Irish government would rather see your children be exploited sexually online than ban it for fear of upsetting this Nazi scumbag.
So afraid to upset their corporate overlords. If this is what is aired in public, imagine what is agreed to with private lobbying? Remember these people are supposed to represent our interests and well being. It's all spin and alternative agendas people.
This is up there with "guns don't kill people, people do."
The bottom line is that every government in the world is afraid of upsetting Trump and his billionaire backers. And if that means letting their platforms create sexually explicit images of kids then so be it. The world is gone.
He didn’t say the actual headline.
See what he actually said.
I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond.
And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
Notice the word “necessarily” in the sentence.
And the sentence before this
And the sentence after this.
context & meaning.
I literally have no interest in defending him but like.. does the above matter to you?
I didn’t say taken out of context. I just said there was context and meaning. you very selectively quoted him and made up what I said.
And I actually hate X and think they should be held responsible for distributing CP via AI.
And very unhappy with a government not doing enough on this. But when I see a distorted quote and people pretending someone is saying X aren’t responsible and claiming an individual is “ok” with CP .. it’s just hate for hate sake and feeds the same shit X and Musk want.
but how is anything helped by making stuff up about people you don’t like to make you feel better about yourself?
And that’s not a personal attack on you, that’s what many, many folks do on here and other places online. It’s not criticism, it’s not journalism, it’s not democratic expression of free speech.
That is simply not “X not responsible for child sexuality abuse images”. He’s using the verb making i.e, creation. he’s not said X are not responsible for hosting or distributing any images.
Saying the users are responsible for creating the images is correct and he’s functionally correct to say the app doesn’t necessarily make them i.e. create them from scratch. it copies this content almost exclusively from elsewhere, incorporates it into a new image.
Now I think this is horrible and there should be controls or checks on this process and X are absolutely responsible for this and are deliberately obfuscating this disingenuously. And that government departments and individuals shouldn’t be on X.
Now I also think his reply was vague, incomplete and inadequate. but you see how you are free to criticize him based on this or interpret what he said means in practice. But to claim somebody said something they literally didn’t is exactly the tactic of the end of truth that Trump and Musk want, it buys into the fascist mindset that truth is a relative.
Politicians will never punish X over this. They rely on this site to spread misinformation about the opposition, they need it to influence election results, they need it to stay in power. How else can you explain how spineless they are when protecting vulnerable children against sexual abuse online?
"X isn't responsible for distributing CSAM or for having a chatbot that makes CSAM. But we need to scan through every message sent in the entire country because maybe some contain CSAM"
Not sure but the user asked grok to create it and grok created it that surely muddies the water somehow. the users didn't create it them selves and publish it grok was very much involved
Phew... According to this, my CSAM server running in my warehouse on the M50 can keep churning out sick, illegal images - but only if someone asks to see one, will THEY get in trouble.
Regardless of the ignorance on the technology that Patrick (and Niamh Smyth) have, the lengths they go to showcase their ignorance to American multinationals is astounding. At the very least, it should trigger a legal review - as it is 100% that AWS and GCP servers in Ireland are storing and serving CSAM to users in Ireland and beyond.
They aren't only hosting these images uploaded by users, they are actually responsible for producing it. The lack of rail guards and restrictions in their tool is responsible for this.
That's a very different situation than just lack of moderation on a social media platform.
Surely both X and the individual users are responsible - the Users are responsible for prompting it, and Twitter is responsible for making the fucking SkyNet of CSAM and doing fuck all to stop it
There is a point that individuals are responsible, same as gun violence in America. But it should not be so easy to do it and Musk beats full responsibility for that. He should be disgusted that it is so easy to do and adjust accordingly.
A real let down from the man who had enough political courage, to make a national issue out of keeping the ive crib in Dublin. Truly focused on the issues that matter.
Nothing new. Regardless of the issue, the Irish government will always take the side that benefits US corporations the most, even if they are the only country in the EU to take that side
He's really on a speed run to become the politician most hated by both the public and his colleagues. He literally can't go a week without pissing one or the other off massively.
I agree. There's probably a million apps out there that allow for this possibility, you can't go taking action against every single tech company all the time, target the users unless the behaviour is encouraged by the company.
It's pretty much impossible for any site that allows people to post text and images to fully filter it. Sites should have systems in place to prevent, report and allow others to report so things are quickly taken down, but even that will never fully prevent an open forum from be abused. If sites refuse such measures, sure hold them responsible, bit of they do implement the recommended measures but something gets through, then I don't think it's fair to hold them liable
This is totally misleading.
He said X are not responsible for MAKING these images that individuals are.
He didn’t say X have no responsibility either.
He simply didn’t say the headline.
And no one bothers clicking through 2 links to read what he actually said before posting a response.
We are the problem. X is driving this too but we need to look at ourselves as well as the internet turns to shit..
Click bait head line to be angry at someone to feed Karma farming …
https://preview.redd.it/gd6qodd775cg1.png?width=642&format=png&auto=webp&s=df72072eb27473ae75f78945ee8ffc6f03d2d5f4
Same minister 4 days ago.
"“no other right that trumps the right of a child to be protected”. He added that “no amount of convincing me that data protection is more important than child protection is ever going to win out”."
Irish Daily mail was the original interview https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2026/01/06/government-digital-wallet-could-be-a-pr-disaster-in-the-making/
The right of corporations trumps children for him. Absolute bollocks
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is a Trojan horse. If they cared about children they would look after the hospitals, homeless children, etc. This needs pressure to ensure the responsibility falls on the platform and not as an excuse to implement digital id.
That is a depressingly stark contrast.
Lets get back to the suggestion to ban internet browsers because its used by criminals
[removed]
Any posts or comments that attack, threaten or insult a person or group; on areas including — but not limited to — national origin, ethnicity, colour, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, social prejudice, and disability may be removed.
That was before he got the brown envelope.
It's fuckin mental that this is the only area of media publishing where they try to claim this.
TV, Radio, Print, Publishing all have a very very long history of the publisher being responsible for the content.
What's also funny is that when you upload copyright material, they're pretty on the ball about monitoring and removing that
Maddening how they’re pushing through (and voting to approve) that EU Chat Control bill to destroy your digital privacy and security rights - based on CSAM perl clutching.
Yet, when one of the largest corporate digital media outlets distributes CSAM generated by an AI software they explicitly created, own, and programmed to do exactly what it has done - shit out CSAM - fucking crickets from the government.
They really wanna suck Elon Musk’s corporate cock for a money shot, don’t they. And it shows you they really don’t give a fuck about CSAM at all.
X is absolutely responsible for this by putting out such a tool that can easily be abused. Then again X should be shut down as its Musks Regressive Shitehawk propaganda tool now. Really the ignorance and stupidity of this government lately is really getting worse, they're out of touch on everything atm.
Don't they also claim rights over using your uploaded images without your consent as part of their T&Cs?
That's the bollocks about AI. It's running around skimming all this copyright and personal material . . . "play me a tune that's like the beatles" "take the clothes of this picture of my classmate" . . . These techie libertarians want us to have no rights to nothing and pay money to play with our own sheit.
To play devil's advocate, if you want to share something on TV or the radio, you need agreement of the management and the operators, but for social media anyone can post anything whenever
This isn't just people posting pictures they've done themselves, though. This is the app itself creating and posting these pictures. It 100% needs the agreement of the management. If I were put in charge of X The Everything App, I would shut down this feature immediately, because that would be within my power.
It's part of the specific nature of social media. Historically there were various legal issues surrounding things such as a physical message board, so if I put up a note on the golf club bulletin board that u/dustaz didn't play a foul ball or whatever golf shit annoys them questions might arise.
Online communication is both tool and broadcaster, in a way very few other industries are.
To use an analogy, nobody says cameras should be banned because they could be used to make child pornography, we recognise that the person using the camera is to blame.
You cannot realistically treat online entities the same way as old-fashioned social media, and you'll never be able to get it perfectly correct.
If your camera produced CSAM when it took a photograph, it would be banned from the consumer market.
In this case, the AI produces the CSAM.
Really isn’t that deep.
Nobody said it was deep, I pointed out it was a tool being misused and isn't just a form of media.
It’s a tool that produces CSAM. Do you not think that should be banned, controlled? Or are you pro-CSAM?
What a ludicrous claim. "Anybody who disagrees with me is a paedophile."
Cowardly bollocks.
Musk has explicitly pitched GROK as the 'edgier' less-PC AI chatbot - he has actively livetweeted his process of demanding it allign with him more politically over time, which is what cranks like him mean when they bemoan wokeness or political bias; they are just annoyed its not biased towards their slant.
With that comes things like the 'nudify' aspect of GROK's image manipulation features. It is a FEATURE, not a bug. It is something Musk likes even more now because it "triggers" the people he dislikes. It is absolutely, categorically a selling point of GROK, and the X platform in general. This apologia is absolutely pathetic.
2026 is going to be a landmark year for the destruction of idea we live in a rules/decency-based society - and especially that our politicians (be they Irish or at the EU level) do so too. In a fair, reasonable society, this issue would have been dealt with two days ago. But they will not act on X or GROK because the US explicitly does not want its tech giants to be restricted in any way, shape or form. So despite the obvious moral wrongness of the situation to everyone and their dog; we'll keep getting mealy-mouthed SHITE like this as an excuse.
It doesn't matter if it's this issue, or Shannon airport, or condemnations of US interventionalism; there is zero point in us, the little people, actually debating these things on Reddit cos the reality is that the economic power in the world, the US, decides what is 'right' and our lads just go along with it.
Absolutely, he's a coward and not suited for the role. I've no doubt his opinion is steered by vested interests who claim to be working as advisors.
Hear hear
Typical cowardly Irish male politician
Align
I do agree to an extent, and no fan of Musks by any means. But i also think there is argument of how people are using. Maybe not fair comparison but you cant blame pen companies for how people use their pens
If a pen produced CSAM, I'd have an auld word with the CEO of the company.
CSAM doesnt only exist on computers or in modern era. So yeah people have been using pens pencils, paintbrushes to create it.
yes I know; it's a completely irrelevant comparison is my point.
That’s a genuinely idiotic comparison not just unfair. If you want a true comparison it would be like one person asking another to draw CSAM material for them and claiming the person who drew it holds no responsibility.
Ah yeah AI is just a 'pen' when you bootlickers want it to be but it's a technological revolution capable of unprecedented wonders the next day when you want to pump the bubble even larger. Musk and Thiel want AI to be considered an unspeakable technological masterpiece capable of anything you can dream of but then when the slightest hint of responsibility for the shit it pumps out suddenly it's just a pen. Would you listen to yourself.
We're not letting the sickos asking for these images off the hook here either.
“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.
Is it not??
It is.
And the people who own the app & the AI are benefitting financially from this creation & dissemination of child sexual abuse images.
Section 5(1)(f) of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 (as amended) makes it a criminal offence to knowingly facilitate the production or distribution of sexualised images of children.
The government (Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael & the various Independents) has just decided that they actually want to continue to support the production of child sexual abuse images & pretend there's nothing they can do.
Honestly, the lot of them are looking like suspicious perves now.
"Guns don't kill people" type sentiment
Someone is hoping to land a job at X/Grok/Twitterwhatever
Based on his comments, probably already has. Only way a reasonable person could come to that conclusion.
That or he's an idiot 🤔
Bold to come out pro-pedophilia but here we are
Hedging his bets in case he ever ends up in court in front of Judge Nolan.
He didn’t say the actual headline. See what he actually said. I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond. And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
You're right. But ... he definitely absolved the platform from being the issue, and put it onto the people using it. He stated that departments and individuals in public services are free to use this platform, this ignored the overall question of a platform that has a CSAM and illegal porn creation facility on by default.
For instance, if the public servant who tried to set up Ming with pictures of another politician, the platform today would create an illegal (by our digital laws) image and distribute it across the platform. This should not be a personal choice, this should be the vanguard for applying existing laws to digital platform, and not hiding behind the lack of AI specific legilation.
I agree with your points totally. Fair criticism based on what he said. But the point is the “story” (more headline & half sentence) framed it differently as hate click bait. And folks commented accordingly, that he’s defending child exploitation.. CP etc, which he didn’t, in fact it was the opposite.
If you go down this path then all sorts of criminal content or crimes committed by AI will go unpunished while the creators reap the rewards. And of course this is what they are planning on.
This guy’s logic: let’s violate everyone’s right to privacy to “protect children” online, but when it comes to actually protecting children online, his excuse is it’s not the company’s fault for allowing users to generate CSAM and store it on their servers.
It's a bit like saying the hitman's not responsible for murder, only the person who paid for the hit.
It’s the classic “guns don’t kill people” argument. Technically true but they’re tools that expressly allow harm to befall another person, just like Musk’s Naz-AI allows child porn to be created (which is expressly against the law here).
He needs to go. This is untenable. He's not remotely fit for or even interested in being minister for arts and media
This. I'd go as far as to say that he has contempt for this two elements of his portfolio.
He didn’t say the actual headline. See what he actually said. I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond. And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
He said: "It’s people using the app that’s making the images”
Sure, he didn't say the headline verbatim, but he is clearly avoiding condemning X, implying they're not responsible for the content their own specific product feature is generating on their platform.
Be interesting so to see if they take action against this AI porn / girlfriend apps that are allegedly being targeted at kids or do they give that a pass too.
We are governed by corporate lapdogs I swear. They would never do anything to upset them. This is a disgrace.
That will come back to haunt him.
I hope so.
No it won't. Hell get voted back in, along with the rest. This should be a national scandal in itself (and a bigger one again when factoring in again his saying he does not care about the law when it comes to removing people's online privacy "to protect the children).
Instead, it'll be out of the news cycle before the weekend is up. It will be interesting to see if one single article is published in a major outlet on the hypocrisy and just how disgusting this is, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
He didn’t say the actual headline. See what he actually said. I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond. And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
This is insane. If a person buys a pencil and paper and draw CSAM, that's on the user, as they are the one who has created it. If a person downloads photoshop and creates CSAM, that's on the user too - they are the one who has created it. In both those scenarios, if they were requested to do so by someone else, it still falls on them as the creator.
In the scenario with Grok AI, the "user" is actually the requester. The actual "creator" is the AI itself. This is blatantly obvious to anyone who has used one of these image generation AIs. Sure, go after the person requesting the content. But DEFINITELY go after the person creating the content too, which in this case is the X / Twitter corporation and its AI.
Incorrect, cowardly, disgusting.
When it’s paper and pencil, you’re saying those are simply the tools, and when it’s photoshop you’re saying photoshop is just a tool, but when it’s an image neural net you’re saying it’s no longer a tool. I don’t understand your reasoning there, unless you believe the image neural net is actually sentient
Because the neural net is the one creating the image.
In my first two examples, a human conceives the image, a human executes the image, a human controls every pixel, every element. The human is the creator. Photoshop (if used) is just a passive tool for the human to create the image.
With generative AI, that causal chain is broken completely. The user does not create anything, but merely provides a request. Then the system interprets the request, synthesizes brand new imagery, including deciding on composition, anatomy, pose, lighting, and renders entirely new pixels that did not exist before.
This isn't a user creating something, it's a user commissioning something. Surely the difference is obvious? The algorithm doesn't need to be sentient or morally culpable for this to be the case.
I think what you’re saying is fair enough but I believe the true author is the person who obtained an image generation tool and used it to the generate the imagery. I believe this is the most rational and the most legally coherent way to look at it.
It gets tricky as well because any multimodal generative AI model has a non-zero probability of producing explicit imagery given a prompt. Alignment tuning minimises the probability of this drastically. Furthermore, any open source generative AI model could be fine-tuned to produce such imagery, some may require a lot of fine tuning and some might not. Some might just require prompt “jail breaking”; tricking the model into generating explicit imagery despite its alignment tuning. Legislating against one model and not others involves drawing an arbitrary line somewhere. Much more legally straightforward to just prosecute the individual
You can and should put guardrails to prevent harmful content generation. Any responsible company is doing that. Twitter failed to stop something easily preventable and did so for profit.
You’re saying there are no guardrails at all against that kind of content? I doubt that or we would’ve seen this article a long time ago. What’s probably happened is these vile individuals found a way to jailbreak the X model against its alignment, probably easier to do with that model since it happily produces pornographic images. The only feasible solution for this would be to ban any model that can produce any kind of pornographic imagery
How depressing to know that the production of CSAM isn't a red line for politicians. Makes you wonder if the red line even exists. Cowardly and shameful load of c*nts.
And yet they support chat control supposedly to combat CSAM. They're all over the place and out of touch.
It’s almost as if chat control has nothing to do with it, he said with absolutely no suspicion
You can call them cunts.
No I prefer to call them p….s. They are males after all.
To be fair, it's not all or even most politicians. O'Donovan's consistently been one of the worst ministers in recent years.
Yeah, he's from my neck of the woods and he's always been a bollox. Ironically enough he's a pro-lifer too but clearly doesn't give a shit about children once they're out of the womb
It's actually people's jobs to produce illicit images on LLMs. The fact the Grok was able to churn out such pictures is a failure of the company, the users expose and abuse it.
Absolute nonsense.
But Reddit etc are legally responsible for the content shared on theirs? Christ almighty
They have no way of catching anyone who does create these horrific images. And even on the off chance that they did, the perpetrators would just get a suspended sentence and walk free.
The only way to protect children from this would be to massively fine X for allowing this content or better yet, ban the site outright. But the Government are too fond of brown envelopes from big tech companies to give a shit.
The world is deteriorating rapidly and our institutions have failed to stop it. Weak men create hard times.
Someone check his hard drive.....
What??? X and Musk are 100% responsible for this. They are able to control any part of their own platform. They can police and monitor their own platform. They can stop their own shitty AI from making CP on their own platform and they can kick the users trying to make it off their own platform.
Ahh lining it up well to have us use ID for social media. Great stuff.. .
wild that they are forcing digital IDs on but allowing twitter to do what they want. Not sure if this guy is a just coward or a legit danger, but this is exactly why politicians excluding themselves from Chat Control is a huge red flag.
So Elon Musk is allowed to make an AI that generates CSAM and it's not their fault but they want to add a bunch of restrictions to citizens to 'protect the children'?
Just say how much Musk donated to your retirement fund.
This is nothing but absolute cowardice. They have the ability to rejig their AI but Elon wants to be an edgelord
Why would any app/service possibly require this capability other than nefarious reasons?
Insane that a proper stance can’t be taken on this, no issue trying to legislate for hate speech though when it’s aimed at them and their families.
Also fuck any weird creepy losers that are actually sat at home doing this, honestly just go find the nearest cliff and take a nose dive, do the world a favour.
This fella genuinely hasn't a notion has he? and the minister for AI who said something like I know nothing about it but sure I'll learn on the job when she was appointed, be grand.
AI isn't smart, it's not creative. It reconfigures what it has seen before through training and spits it back out. Yes transformed into something "new" by combining various bits of data, but bits of data it has seen before.
I don't know if it's still the case for all AI models but recently enough AIs couldn't produce a picture of a full glass of wine. It didn't matter what you told it to do, "fill it to the brim", "fill it so it's overflowing", etc. All it could do was produce a picture of a glass of wine with a generous amount of wine in it, but not full to the brim. No matter the follow up prompts, it couldn't do it. That's because there are very few images of glasses of wine that are full to the brim on the internet, it's just not a thing people take photos of. So AI image generation doesn't know how to do it.
I just tried it there and the first AI generator I used still can't do it.
So all this blathering on about wine glasses leads me to this. I haven't seen the images that X will generate and I've no intention to look for them to help answer this question. Were the generated images just reconfigured and scaled down versions of images of adults, or not? If not, what was the AI trained on, and why isn't that being investigated? How certain are we that this isn't just about the generation of CSAM, but also the use and commercial exploitation of it? If X aren't responsible for the generation (which is bullshit) then are they responsible for what it was trained on?
What a dickhead. Another clown unfit to run the country.
Hold the individual users accountable so.
What a load of bollocks.
Someone should put him in a mankini and see how he likes it
I don't buy the publisher / platform distinction being made here. If someone posted CSAM to twitter, the company wouldn't be liable for "publishing" it, but that's not what this is about. They've created a software tool, which they are willing and able to control and reprogram as needed; they've previously used that control to make it more right-wing, and to make it worship Elon Musk. They have the ability to make it refuse to generate CSAM, and they are choosing not to do that.
Wait so are we going to have an open web at last. No isp blocks on URLs if we're not holding hosts responsible. No website taken down for copyright material uploaded
"The minister argued that technology is moving too fast for laws to keep pace." Warned for ages about AI needing to be regulated, even Musk was on about it years ago before his brain turned to complete soup. If technology is moving too fast for you then resign as you're not fit for your job.
Elon Musk could put an end to it within the hour. CNN reported today that "Internally at xAI, Musk has pushed back against guardrails for Grok".
Elon is offering up an app that lets child predators sexually harass others, for their own sick titillation, at the push of a button. It's absurd to say that he bears no blame because it's the users who are choosing to push the button. If he wanted to, he could easily stop them by making changes to his app.
Not wanting to poke the bear is no longer an option when the bear is eating your kids.
They absolutely fucking are responsible for letting their own AI generate such images
Please remember what this man said about Twitter/X next time he tries to claim digital ID and blanket age bans from entire platforms are about keeping kids safe.
If you give someone a platform to present, distribute and share this disgusting shit you are responsible.
Which is already the case - remember the Irish guy who got extradited to the US because he hosted a website that paedos used but he didn't actually upload anything explicit himself?
Anyone involved with Grok should get significant jail time for this.
We all joked about the "make crime illegal" fella but the generation of this kind of content is plainly illegal and a Minister is denying that fact. Given the gravity of the crimes we're talking about, that is sickening.
He didn’t say the actual headline. See what he actually said. I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond. And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
The headline is not misleading, I've read his words and he says that X are not responsible for generating the images and its users are. What are you on about
What a weasel of a man. What a statement to make.
He didn’t say the actual headline. See what he actually said. I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond. And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
gary why are you spamming this in response to everyone’s comments condemning this? do you need your hard drive checked?
How about as a social experiment you actually click and read the story. see what he said. then come back and criticize the flaws in the policy and application of safe guards. but just shouting hate based on a headline is actually what the likes of Musk wants and makes online spaces worse.
Wee scumbag
The whole government has been in favour of the hands off approach with tech companies while making the population responsible, but Patrick O'Donovan is an special dope. The sooner he's away from politics the better.
It's crazy for him to come out with this statement when at yhe same time FFG are pushing so hard for Gov IDs on social media.
K what do other AI do when you ask them to make images like that? You have to phrase things as hypotheticals for chatGPT to write some jokes about real people coz the creators are afraid of defamation. Just regulate the damn thang or shut it down ffs
He needs to be dragged for this and never be forgotten about what he said, this is bending down to Musk and allowing a platform to willfully provide CSAM with zero ramifications.
Complete 180 on social media platforms expected to moderate their extreme content.
Musk's AI platform has just been given the all clear to produce porn of everyone without issue, it's now only if users get caught..... fucking marvellous deterrent.
If Musk doesn't have to censor CSAM why would he or any other platform be expected to moderate extreme content now?
Clearly the government has the best interests of the children at heart with their age verification and digital ID. Oh hold on a minute.
A pathetic response. Especially as it has come out Musk intentionally pushed his team to remove guardrails on Grok leading to many of xAi safety staff to quit.
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/08/tech/elon-musk-xai-digital-undressing
Rubbish. X is knowingly and willing providing a medium for distribution of such images for profit. If an individual were the be caught doing that they would be prosecuted and rightly so.
If anybody created a website that hosted these images they would be arrested and the website would be taken down immediately.
Not Musk. The world is too cowardly to stand up to him. The Irish government would rather see your children be exploited sexually online than ban it for fear of upsetting this Nazi scumbag.
Should read "Company that created free child porn generator not responsible for child porn it generated - Media Minister".
So afraid to upset their corporate overlords. If this is what is aired in public, imagine what is agreed to with private lobbying? Remember these people are supposed to represent our interests and well being. It's all spin and alternative agendas people.
This opinion is contrary to Irish law on the matter, which is clear that providing the service is a criminal act.
So we're being forced to identify ourselves on the internet "to protect children" but X are being let away with this.
This is up there with "guns don't kill people, people do."
The bottom line is that every government in the world is afraid of upsetting Trump and his billionaire backers. And if that means letting their platforms create sexually explicit images of kids then so be it. The world is gone.
He didn’t say the actual headline. See what he actually said. I’ve no interest in defending him at all but this is a symptom of the shit-ifiication of social media and the internet overall. False misleading headline, bad photo and angry people get angry and respond. And never actually click through the links and verify the accuracy of a headline, heck you don’t even bother reading the story. You are being useful idiots ..
"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.
He literally said it, you [not useful] idiot.
Notice the word “necessarily” in the sentence. And the sentence before this And the sentence after this. context & meaning. I literally have no interest in defending him but like.. does the above matter to you?
"Necessarily" 😂 Well that exonerates him so. For someone who has no interest in defending him you are putting a lot of effort into... defending him.
"Taken out of context" is the lamest, most bullshit political excuse. Its pretty obvious this government is terrified of Musk and Trump.
I didn’t say taken out of context. I just said there was context and meaning. you very selectively quoted him and made up what I said. And I actually hate X and think they should be held responsible for distributing CP via AI. And very unhappy with a government not doing enough on this. But when I see a distorted quote and people pretending someone is saying X aren’t responsible and claiming an individual is “ok” with CP .. it’s just hate for hate sake and feeds the same shit X and Musk want. but how is anything helped by making stuff up about people you don’t like to make you feel better about yourself? And that’s not a personal attack on you, that’s what many, many folks do on here and other places online. It’s not criticism, it’s not journalism, it’s not democratic expression of free speech.
Fair enough but it's clearly not made up. He said it.
He didn’t though. your quote you gave back to me proves he didn’t..
"but it’s not necessarily the app that’s making the images. It’s people using the app that’s making the images,”
That is simply not “X not responsible for child sexuality abuse images”. He’s using the verb making i.e, creation. he’s not said X are not responsible for hosting or distributing any images. Saying the users are responsible for creating the images is correct and he’s functionally correct to say the app doesn’t necessarily make them i.e. create them from scratch. it copies this content almost exclusively from elsewhere, incorporates it into a new image. Now I think this is horrible and there should be controls or checks on this process and X are absolutely responsible for this and are deliberately obfuscating this disingenuously. And that government departments and individuals shouldn’t be on X. Now I also think his reply was vague, incomplete and inadequate. but you see how you are free to criticize him based on this or interpret what he said means in practice. But to claim somebody said something they literally didn’t is exactly the tactic of the end of truth that Trump and Musk want, it buys into the fascist mindset that truth is a relative.
Nobody uses x nowadays except for spreading racism, propaganda and ai morphed images of minors. Anybody that still uses x, run away from them.
This
Can you imagine someone actually listening to you and over reacting like that... Gas.
Politicians will never punish X over this. They rely on this site to spread misinformation about the opposition, they need it to influence election results, they need it to stay in power. How else can you explain how spineless they are when protecting vulnerable children against sexual abuse online?
Pathetic cowards!
Stupid fucker
He looks as mealy mouthed in this photo as his utterances…
Cop out
At the very least, why isn't it both? They truly love licking the boots of Musk don't they?
"Guys, it's a question of personal choice you know? Free speech is back, as a wise man said."
I wonder how this then plays into the need for ID verification for social media argument.
"X isn't responsible for distributing CSAM or for having a chatbot that makes CSAM. But we need to scan through every message sent in the entire country because maybe some contain CSAM"
Great to have a new piece of shit to focus my ire on.
Which political party wants to ban Grok?
i dont think i can say the things i want to say about this without being banned
Er why not both?!
Not sure but the user asked grok to create it and grok created it that surely muddies the water somehow. the users didn't create it them selves and publish it grok was very much involved
How much is muskrat paying him I wonder
Why do they keep crawling to the musk cunt ? Dump X
Phew... According to this, my CSAM server running in my warehouse on the M50 can keep churning out sick, illegal images - but only if someone asks to see one, will THEY get in trouble.
Regardless of the ignorance on the technology that Patrick (and Niamh Smyth) have, the lengths they go to showcase their ignorance to American multinationals is astounding. At the very least, it should trigger a legal review - as it is 100% that AWS and GCP servers in Ireland are storing and serving CSAM to users in Ireland and beyond.
They aren't only hosting these images uploaded by users, they are actually responsible for producing it. The lack of rail guards and restrictions in their tool is responsible for this.
That's a very different situation than just lack of moderation on a social media platform.
Surely both X and the individual users are responsible - the Users are responsible for prompting it, and Twitter is responsible for making the fucking SkyNet of CSAM and doing fuck all to stop it
There is a point that individuals are responsible, same as gun violence in America. But it should not be so easy to do it and Musk beats full responsibility for that. He should be disgusted that it is so easy to do and adjust accordingly.
A real let down from the man who had enough political courage, to make a national issue out of keeping the ive crib in Dublin. Truly focused on the issues that matter.
"Epstein not responsible for child sex abuse, the individuals who paid him are.."
I mean yeah its not exactly equivalent but I honestly don't feel its that far off.
Nothing new. Regardless of the issue, the Irish government will always take the side that benefits US corporations the most, even if they are the only country in the EU to take that side
This tube is not the sharpest tool in the box:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140118081503/https://www.finegael.ie/latest-news/2014/odonovan-calls-for-crackd/index.xml
He's really on a speed run to become the politician most hated by both the public and his colleagues. He literally can't go a week without pissing one or the other off massively.
I agree. There's probably a million apps out there that allow for this possibility, you can't go taking action against every single tech company all the time, target the users unless the behaviour is encouraged by the company.
It's pretty much impossible for any site that allows people to post text and images to fully filter it. Sites should have systems in place to prevent, report and allow others to report so things are quickly taken down, but even that will never fully prevent an open forum from be abused. If sites refuse such measures, sure hold them responsible, bit of they do implement the recommended measures but something gets through, then I don't think it's fair to hold them liable
'Guns don't kill people, people kill people!'
This is totally misleading. He said X are not responsible for MAKING these images that individuals are. He didn’t say X have no responsibility either. He simply didn’t say the headline. And no one bothers clicking through 2 links to read what he actually said before posting a response. We are the problem. X is driving this too but we need to look at ourselves as well as the internet turns to shit.. Click bait head line to be angry at someone to feed Karma farming …