Why is a Minister with responsibility for this area basically preemptively defending a company he should be regulating? Is this not a very odd remark for a Minister to make?
This was always predictable, and has been warned against for years. We cannot put our entire economy in one basket, it’s madness. I am very much in favour of cooperation with other nations, but when push comes to shove, we need to be entirely self-sustaining.
He's utterly spineless. All he's ever contributed to the Dail is shouting about how the IRA killed Jerry McCabe and by the way did he mention he's from Adare and IRA means Sinn Fein so vote for him, a nice safe FG?
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A generous reading of the situation is that he has some control over enforcement and justice with respect to individual Irish users of X; whereas he has very little prospect of actually bringing X as a whole or Musk specifically to justice without the US taking the mantle of lead regulator.
There is a notice and take down convention, I think X has taken down the images that highlighted this last week but I don't think they implemented guardrails to prevent it from happening more....
It's not like rogue users are posting CSAM on X and their moderation team are doing everything they can to stamp it out, they're the ones producing it!
IMO even at its height that defence is bullshit and they shouldn't be allowed rely on it.
X's algorithm is essentially an editorial line, X's systems actively review content that it then decides (mathematically, based on the formula set out in the algorithm decided on by Musk et al), to republish and promote in the feeds of other users.
The whole unique selling point of the recommender system is that it curates material, and puts it in front those who it thinks will interact with it further.
Thats active publishing/marketing - the community noticeboard analogy hasnt been remotely correct for at least a decade.
I couldn’t agree more. If any paper publication in the country engaged in a fraction of the propaganda, neo-Nazi promotion, and sexual exploitation as X, they would be immediately shut down.
I work for a newspaper and I’m fairly certain the editor would be in court for platforming child abuse material, and NO ONE would buy the paper. Could you actually imagine
If it was just X getting random images uploaded by users then maybe I'd agree in theory but in this case X are literally providing a tool to generate those images and the ability to generate those images is entirely in their hands so in that case they are responsible. The media minister is a fucking idiot.
I’m not sure how to phrase this, but it also feels directly in opposition to the idea of enforcing age gates onto adult material.
On the one hand, we are told adult sites and social media need to be strictly policed and we all will face the consequences of it, via the government enforcing a new system to shut us out unless we prove our age. Despite the fact it’s just a tool that is used to spread whatever messaging or such, it has to be policed.
On the other hand, a tool like Grok seems to be up to individual users and shouldn’t be policed, cause the website isn’t responsible for how people use it.
Feels like a conflict. Why is grok dismissed as “not the sites responsibility to police its users”, but Reddit will have to get age gates to police ITS users?
Its because it was never about child safety. Its about unmasking anonymous accounts who are mean about politicians on the internet so they can send the cops to intimidate them.
I just don't think any AI platform available in the EU that is hosted by a provider like Meta, X, OpenAI...etc should allow any "remove clothes" feature in general. If it is your body you can just take an actual naked image if yourself so the only target audience of that feature of any image editing model is always going to be someone doing it either for a perverse fascination of someone else's body, revenge porn or in this case worse. It is easier to ban this feature entirely than to allow even the chance of something slipping through. I know there are models available widely that can be run locally but that is very different to a major provider with huge resources to provide quality and speed to the effort.
The reddit side of things and other user generated content sites do have a certain amount of regulation on their content like if they don't remove materials of children they are responsible for it. In this case it is a different problem though. Age gating something is more about protecting the viewer, not protecting the person who had their image taken and is being distributed as non-consensual porn. The issues are very different, I'd class this more in the zone of things like upskirting, hidden cameras or whatever which I also think should be a criminal act to generate.
The core of AI products is the guardrails one puts in place. X could easily put guardrails in place to prevent Grok from creating such images. They clearly haven’t or won’t put those guardrails in place.
It’s a bit like
Pre-AI: Creep takes camera, takes pics of kids at the playground, puts them on the internet. Creep is fully liable and internet platform has duty to remove.
Grok: Grok sticks camera in playground, allows creep to ask for photo, Grok publishes to internet. Creep is still a creep, but Grok has now created the image and published it. Grok has no personality and is only allowed do what its guardrails allow for. X is responsible for kiddie pics being created and published.
Flick of a button stuff to turn this feature off and not allow NSFW or illegality. You can't do this on any of the other major AI platforms it seems. Impossible to see any kind of justification for this to continue.
If you sell a car and that person runs over a child with the car of course the car manufacturer isn't to blame, if you though make a feature of the car to run people over the car manufacturer and the person are both to blame. There are reasons why we have standards and practices for various products being sold and AI can and should have safeguarding in place to review materials and not offer things that would break the law where possible. Also every cloud based AI provider right now have these tools to review content, Grok just knowingly has a loose policy.
I agree with this take. X/Grok is making the illegal material. The person putting in the request is like a person placing an order for custom illegal material and X is fulfilling those orders and supplying the material.
The material does not exist until it is made in an X data center
You rarely find smart people in high ranking government positions, because people who have both the smarts and the leadership skills, can find far more rewarding work.
Time and time again this minister proves he's not of the caliber needed for a country that is home to so many international tech companies.
This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on the ministers part (and his advisors) of our safe-harbour protections (which are similar to Section 230 in the US). Online services are generally given the benefit of the doubt that, due to their size and scale, they may not have prior knowledge of every piece of content posted. However, once illegal content is brought to their attention, liability can attach if it remains online or continues to be generated and posted. Repeated infractions like the images generated by Grok, which is part of X, of the same type are not seen in isolation.
X will likely argue that each instance is separate, that Grok is merely infrastructure, and that the reports they’ve received over months relate to distinct, isolated events. But you’d have to be extremely gullible to accept that framing, and it’s hard to imagine a court doing so either. However minister Patrick O'Donovan seems to be very gullible.
Under EU law (especially the Digital Services Act) Platforms are not automatically liable for user content But they are responsible once they have notice. And especially responsible when harm is:
- Repeated
- Systemic
- Linked to a tool they designed and deployed (like Grok)
The users that request the material are responsible, but so is X and Grok in these cases. Saying “it’s just people using the app” is gombeen shit.
Great post. I doubted we had an equivalent to the safe harbour laws but even if we did, I couldn't see how images produced by X/Grok could be protected under safe harbour laws. It's not content being produced by users, it is X producing it themselves.
As someone who was represented by this man, I find him absolutely repulsive. How the fuck can you see an AI generating CP and then go "Ara the unregulated AI tool that everyone has access to, isn't the problem, it's just individuals" when they have proof of systematic abuses across multiple problems including the fact that Grok pumps out something crazy like 80% of deepfake content according to a recent study.
This is the man that FF and FG made a Minister, mind you. This isn't some backbencher with little sway. This mans voice and decisions will materially impact things here in ireland and he doesn't even have the moral backbone to call X out on the fact that they've made CP accessible on a social media platform.
He's applying the "guns don't kill people.." trope to tech regulation.
What he seems to miss is that aside from the US, almost all sensible, developed countries regulate guns, for good reason, and with the same logic, X needs to be regulated to hell for allowing this.
Does the Minister responsible for regulating the Internet think we should repeal the laws that allow us to go after websites hosting child sexual abuse material? Sure they're just hosting it, we should blame those accessing it, according to him.
If not, why should we go after those hosting such material and not X who built a tool to produce and disseminate it?
O'Donovan is defending a massive producer and distributor of child sexual abuse material which is located in this jurisdiction and can be prosecuted within this jurisdiction.
Defending a company profiting from paedophilia should be a resigning matter. Harris should fire him by close of business if he has any moral fibre whatsoever.
This is what we voted for: vile, craven, cowards interested in absolutely nothing but their own benefit. And if that means defending child porn content hosts, well so be it.
Edit: - Quote; “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.
What if you prompt an image for adult content and because of it's algorithm and what it's being fed on it makes CSAM? Which it does. Who's at fault then Minister?
Twitter AI says something moderately left leaning and Musk takes it down and changes the programming to correct. It takes almost no work to put a nudity filter on the AI, its a joke that Musk is not being called out. I would expect our minister to maybe equivocate and say they have to look into it or cant comment on individual cases or something, but outright saying X is not responsible .
I work with AI, including training LLM models for a specific purpose. It would take a huge amount of work to put a nudity filter on the AI. I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be done though.
It's a dumb tool that can be easily manipulated. You can tell it that it isn't allowed produce nudes and then two minutes later you'll find that a user asks it to roleplay what it would do if it was allowed to and it will do it. Given the nature of the system engineering it to have no work around is quite difficult.
Its not easy but I think societies will only take so much anarchy for Ai sake. If I can install a AI LLM to block adult content they can do it to. LLM can identify if an image has nudity in it with high accuracy. Have that as a pass on the output image it gets. Don't let the user change the output filter. Same thing could be done to protect copyrights and information about suicide etc. Sites are already moderating comments this way.
But here is the thing. Nudity is the point. AI companies are already realizing opening up to porn as a revenue stream.
If someone invented a new type of bus that had an ‘explode and kill all the passengers’ optional feature and it was difficult to prevent a workaround to disabling that feature, we would immediately ban that bus and probably arrest everyone involved in making and selling it.
Instead our government wants to make the passengers sort it out.
To an extent, it would certainly help. Ultimately someone will find a way to trick it into ignoring that, and that method will spread and then you have to stop that too.
I was more just trying to point out that it's not "almost no work" there's no off switch for nsfw content. If the responsible teams said it was going to cost a million to stop this I'd say that's perfectly reasonable keeping in mind it cost billions to train. It's going to take a team of some of the highest paid software engineers a few weeks to almost fully stop this.
I guess you could also just turn it off temporarily and stop it now too until it's ready.
I like the other suggested solution of have a separate, disconnected AI moderating the output of the first AI but it's not cheap
Elon Musk has not only allowed, but encouraged in good humour this trend of sexual harassment and the generation of child sexual abuse images. That's what we are talking about here. For the minister to say "ah well sure it ain't Elon's fault" is extremely disturbing to me.
This is the guy who wanted us all to give up our digital rights to "protect" women and children only a few weeks ago, now basically using the '"guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument in relation to CSAM. Reprehensible.
Contact your tds and ask them if they agree that supplying access to to questionable information like grok does is something they dont see an issue with.
We should be fining the ever-living daylights out of X for failing to protect its user base, and we should be arresting and charging anyone that instructs an AI to generate CSAM.
Everyone agrees on the second part. It's crazy that O'Donovan's arguing against the first part. Well, not that crazy seeing as he's one of the most incompetent ministers we've had in recent years.
Fine Gael once again showing they are ideologically opposed to regulating any multinational company, even when they are creating something as heinous as CSAM.
Elon Musk is literally laughing about the disgusting content that is being created and shared on his website.
These people should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.
Grok has topped the app download charts in Ireland since this story broke. Perverts and criminals have found out about this "functionality" and want to commit some sexual offences.
So, yeah, the app shouldn't exist, but these people are a big fucking problem.
“The law can’t keep up with technology” - nonsense. The law is there, it is the minister who can’t keep up with the law. He should resign. He is demonstrating either incompetence or a conflict of interest and an inability to maintain the law.
legally this is correct , legally speaking if a user prompt athe bot the user is at fault due to the fact its UGC( user generated content) EU law only says if they find anything the have to act ( if twitter was responsible it would be a boiling frog issue)
I literally reported to X that there was some awful stuff with animals on there. The s-abuse type (i cant remember the word rn and i dont want that in my search history) and they said there is nothing wrong with the posts I found. Thats when I closed my account. I didnt realize sick shit like that was on there. I literally found those pages because my friends I used to play a game called how many clicks to porn. IT TOOK 3 to get to images that I literally threw up afterwards to
This contradicts Junior Minister Niamh Smith on the radio this morning. She was pretty pissed off at X and Musk. Any decent company would have coded this shit out.
This is a global issue for X. Amazed its's being allowed to stand...
Agree with this. It's like blaming the camera for producing child abuse images instead of the person who actually abused the child. These people shouldn't be getting to hide behind the tool they used and heaping the blame on that instead of on themselves.
Why is a Minister with responsibility for this area basically preemptively defending a company he should be regulating? Is this not a very odd remark for a Minister to make?
Because Trump
We’re bitched around by US multinationals, because they pretty much fund our entire country
Twitter funds fuck all. They don't make a profit to pay corporation tax and they are not anywhere close to a major employer.
Yeah but you can regulate X and that's won't mean that American pharma will give up their billions invested here.
This was always predictable, and has been warned against for years. We cannot put our entire economy in one basket, it’s madness. I am very much in favour of cooperation with other nations, but when push comes to shove, we need to be entirely self-sustaining.
I'm quite fond of the term "Corporate vassal state" myself.
This is the same government who used their valuable one on one with the US president to lobby on behalf of intel, a us multinational…
Really seems like they see defending US companies as their primary function
Because our ruling class love the taste of boot from our neo-colonial masters.
Regulator is also an independent body, comments like this are problematic
He's utterly spineless. All he's ever contributed to the Dail is shouting about how the IRA killed Jerry McCabe and by the way did he mention he's from Adare and IRA means Sinn Fein so vote for him, a nice safe FG?
$$$$$$$$$
[removed]
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A generous reading of the situation is that he has some control over enforcement and justice with respect to individual Irish users of X; whereas he has very little prospect of actually bringing X as a whole or Musk specifically to justice without the US taking the mantle of lead regulator.
Elon Musk couldn't have prepared a better statement himself
So if a newspaper published a picture that was would they be responsible?
Why do social media get to break any laws with impunity?
This is actually disgusting and our government are so craven.
There is a notice and take down convention, I think X has taken down the images that highlighted this last week but I don't think they implemented guardrails to prevent it from happening more....
It's not like rogue users are posting CSAM on X and their moderation team are doing everything they can to stamp it out, they're the ones producing it!
X can turn it off so they cant produce it
I think they legally view themselves as newstands as opposed to editors.
The concept is less newstands and more community notice boards -
The owner of the notice board is only liable once theyre made aware of the issue and dont do anything to stop it.
The Defence is one that has applied to date for hate crimes and defamation.
The Defence requires that there are responsible and appropriate safeguards in place.
In this case Musk actually created the tool that caused the damage. And its CSAM.
Also - its criminal law that should be applied here not civil.
Exactly. The product should literally not be allowed to create that content.
Exactly.
To bring that defence into dispute further -
IMO even at its height that defence is bullshit and they shouldn't be allowed rely on it.
X's algorithm is essentially an editorial line, X's systems actively review content that it then decides (mathematically, based on the formula set out in the algorithm decided on by Musk et al), to republish and promote in the feeds of other users.
The whole unique selling point of the recommender system is that it curates material, and puts it in front those who it thinks will interact with it further.
Thats active publishing/marketing - the community noticeboard analogy hasnt been remotely correct for at least a decade.
I couldn’t agree more. If any paper publication in the country engaged in a fraction of the propaganda, neo-Nazi promotion, and sexual exploitation as X, they would be immediately shut down.
I work for a newspaper and I’m fairly certain the editor would be in court for platforming child abuse material, and NO ONE would buy the paper. Could you actually imagine
If it was just X getting random images uploaded by users then maybe I'd agree in theory but in this case X are literally providing a tool to generate those images and the ability to generate those images is entirely in their hands so in that case they are responsible. The media minister is a fucking idiot.
I’m not sure how to phrase this, but it also feels directly in opposition to the idea of enforcing age gates onto adult material.
On the one hand, we are told adult sites and social media need to be strictly policed and we all will face the consequences of it, via the government enforcing a new system to shut us out unless we prove our age. Despite the fact it’s just a tool that is used to spread whatever messaging or such, it has to be policed.
On the other hand, a tool like Grok seems to be up to individual users and shouldn’t be policed, cause the website isn’t responsible for how people use it.
Feels like a conflict. Why is grok dismissed as “not the sites responsibility to police its users”, but Reddit will have to get age gates to police ITS users?
Its because it was never about child safety. Its about unmasking anonymous accounts who are mean about politicians on the internet so they can send the cops to intimidate them.
I just don't think any AI platform available in the EU that is hosted by a provider like Meta, X, OpenAI...etc should allow any "remove clothes" feature in general. If it is your body you can just take an actual naked image if yourself so the only target audience of that feature of any image editing model is always going to be someone doing it either for a perverse fascination of someone else's body, revenge porn or in this case worse. It is easier to ban this feature entirely than to allow even the chance of something slipping through. I know there are models available widely that can be run locally but that is very different to a major provider with huge resources to provide quality and speed to the effort.
The reddit side of things and other user generated content sites do have a certain amount of regulation on their content like if they don't remove materials of children they are responsible for it. In this case it is a different problem though. Age gating something is more about protecting the viewer, not protecting the person who had their image taken and is being distributed as non-consensual porn. The issues are very different, I'd class this more in the zone of things like upskirting, hidden cameras or whatever which I also think should be a criminal act to generate.
The core of AI products is the guardrails one puts in place. X could easily put guardrails in place to prevent Grok from creating such images. They clearly haven’t or won’t put those guardrails in place.
It’s a bit like Pre-AI: Creep takes camera, takes pics of kids at the playground, puts them on the internet. Creep is fully liable and internet platform has duty to remove. Grok: Grok sticks camera in playground, allows creep to ask for photo, Grok publishes to internet. Creep is still a creep, but Grok has now created the image and published it. Grok has no personality and is only allowed do what its guardrails allow for. X is responsible for kiddie pics being created and published.
Flick of a button stuff to turn this feature off and not allow NSFW or illegality. You can't do this on any of the other major AI platforms it seems. Impossible to see any kind of justification for this to continue.
If you sell a car and that person runs over a child with the car of course the car manufacturer isn't to blame, if you though make a feature of the car to run people over the car manufacturer and the person are both to blame. There are reasons why we have standards and practices for various products being sold and AI can and should have safeguarding in place to review materials and not offer things that would break the law where possible. Also every cloud based AI provider right now have these tools to review content, Grok just knowingly has a loose policy.
Elon isn't really make safe cars either. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-22/elon-musk-was-warned-of-potential-tesla-door-safety-issues
The cybertruck was called by an EU vehicle safety investigator as a rolling guillotine too which is why it was banned in the EU
I agree with this take. X/Grok is making the illegal material. The person putting in the request is like a person placing an order for custom illegal material and X is fulfilling those orders and supplying the material.
The material does not exist until it is made in an X data center
You rarely find smart people in high ranking government positions, because people who have both the smarts and the leadership skills, can find far more rewarding work.
Time and time again this minister proves he's not of the caliber needed for a country that is home to so many international tech companies.
This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding on the ministers part (and his advisors) of our safe-harbour protections (which are similar to Section 230 in the US). Online services are generally given the benefit of the doubt that, due to their size and scale, they may not have prior knowledge of every piece of content posted. However, once illegal content is brought to their attention, liability can attach if it remains online or continues to be generated and posted. Repeated infractions like the images generated by Grok, which is part of X, of the same type are not seen in isolation.
X will likely argue that each instance is separate, that Grok is merely infrastructure, and that the reports they’ve received over months relate to distinct, isolated events. But you’d have to be extremely gullible to accept that framing, and it’s hard to imagine a court doing so either. However minister Patrick O'Donovan seems to be very gullible.
Under EU law (especially the Digital Services Act) Platforms are not automatically liable for user content But they are responsible once they have notice. And especially responsible when harm is: - Repeated - Systemic - Linked to a tool they designed and deployed (like Grok)
The users that request the material are responsible, but so is X and Grok in these cases. Saying “it’s just people using the app” is gombeen shit.
Great post. I doubted we had an equivalent to the safe harbour laws but even if we did, I couldn't see how images produced by X/Grok could be protected under safe harbour laws. It's not content being produced by users, it is X producing it themselves.
You cannot be fucking serious? Is our government seriously defending CHILD PORN to keep Musk and the US happy?
The US president is moob deep in an international paedophile racket. So, apparently, yes.
"Nooooo we need a picture of your face and a dna sample so you can access YouTube to protect children!"
"lol fuck off X isn't the problem actually"
God O'Donovan is such a car crash. Was he picked purely because of the need to spread FG ministries around the country?
That’s the reason 90% of government posts are filled.
He sent in 10 cereal boxes and won a competition to become a government minister
Fool
What a fucking joke
As someone who was represented by this man, I find him absolutely repulsive. How the fuck can you see an AI generating CP and then go "Ara the unregulated AI tool that everyone has access to, isn't the problem, it's just individuals" when they have proof of systematic abuses across multiple problems including the fact that Grok pumps out something crazy like 80% of deepfake content according to a recent study.
This is the man that FF and FG made a Minister, mind you. This isn't some backbencher with little sway. This mans voice and decisions will materially impact things here in ireland and he doesn't even have the moral backbone to call X out on the fact that they've made CP accessible on a social media platform.
He's applying the "guns don't kill people.." trope to tech regulation.
What he seems to miss is that aside from the US, almost all sensible, developed countries regulate guns, for good reason, and with the same logic, X needs to be regulated to hell for allowing this.
This is low, even for them. Truly sad and pathetic.
Does the Minister responsible for regulating the Internet think we should repeal the laws that allow us to go after websites hosting child sexual abuse material? Sure they're just hosting it, we should blame those accessing it, according to him.
If not, why should we go after those hosting such material and not X who built a tool to produce and disseminate it?
O'Donovan is defending a massive producer and distributor of child sexual abuse material which is located in this jurisdiction and can be prosecuted within this jurisdiction.
Defending a company profiting from paedophilia should be a resigning matter. Harris should fire him by close of business if he has any moral fibre whatsoever.
Emergency legislation to ban this ai.
Illegal to advertise sex bots.
This isn't rocket science.
Absolutely. There is a literal pedophilia machine being run by the richest man in the world, and the government doesn't feel the need to act.
Whats occurred is already illegal in terms of individuals and companies. There are further AI harm laws to be enacted in August https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2026/01/06/non-consensual-ai-images-on-social-media-illegal-content-irish-regulator-says/
https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/what-we-do/innovation-research-development/artificial-intelligence/eu-ai-act/
A cowardly cop-out.
This fucker is saying this today, and yet has in the last week also been trying to boast about ignoring any laws or privacy that may exist because "protecting the children" is so important..
This is what we voted for: vile, craven, cowards interested in absolutely nothing but their own benefit. And if that means defending child porn content hosts, well so be it.
He’s a bit of a soft eejit, isn’t he?
Sadly, he's no ejit.
This however seems like a massive mis-step for him. Nomally he seems to do whatever he thinks will win votes.
I'm not sure who he thinks this will appeal to.
It's pretty bad when you find yourself agreeing with most of TheJournal.ie comments.
A pathetic response from O'Donovan
What the actual fuck
Edit: - Quote; “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.
Well then what the fuck are we paying you for?
as per EU law Platforms are not automatically liable for user content But they are responsible once they have notice
But in this case the platform made the content.
What if you prompt an image for adult content and because of it's algorithm and what it's being fed on it makes CSAM? Which it does. Who's at fault then Minister?
Looking for precedent. (Not saying this exactly is)
Eric Eoin Marquez: The Irishman labelled the 'kingpin’ of child abuse material https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/spotlight/arid-40699247.html
This guy claimed he was just a libertarian hosting service but he knew about the CSAM and dismissed concerns about illustrated CSAM.
Internet sites containing Child Abuse Material to be blocked 10th February 2020 https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/our-departments/office-of-corporate-communications/press-releases/2020/february/internet-sites-containing-child-abuse-material-to-be-blocked-10th-february-2020.html
An Garda Síochána – Ongoing Investigations into Identification and Safeguarding Victims of Online Child Sexual Abuse in Ireland https://www.garda.ie/en/about-us/our-departments/office-of-corporate-communications/press-releases/2025/october/an-garda-siochana-ongoing-investigations-into-identification-and-safeguarding-victims-of-online-child-sexual-abuse-in-ireland.html
Pure "guns don't kill people, people do" bollox talk
The funny thing is we regulate guns here, really strictly.
This is just cowardice.
Completely and entirely. With any luck the EU will pull the trigger and ban X from Europe entirely.
Twitter AI says something moderately left leaning and Musk takes it down and changes the programming to correct. It takes almost no work to put a nudity filter on the AI, its a joke that Musk is not being called out. I would expect our minister to maybe equivocate and say they have to look into it or cant comment on individual cases or something, but outright saying X is not responsible .
I work with AI, including training LLM models for a specific purpose. It would take a huge amount of work to put a nudity filter on the AI. I'm not saying it can't or shouldn't be done though.
It's a dumb tool that can be easily manipulated. You can tell it that it isn't allowed produce nudes and then two minutes later you'll find that a user asks it to roleplay what it would do if it was allowed to and it will do it. Given the nature of the system engineering it to have no work around is quite difficult.
Its not easy but I think societies will only take so much anarchy for Ai sake. If I can install a AI LLM to block adult content they can do it to. LLM can identify if an image has nudity in it with high accuracy. Have that as a pass on the output image it gets. Don't let the user change the output filter. Same thing could be done to protect copyrights and information about suicide etc. Sites are already moderating comments this way.
But here is the thing. Nudity is the point. AI companies are already realizing opening up to porn as a revenue stream.
If someone invented a new type of bus that had an ‘explode and kill all the passengers’ optional feature and it was difficult to prevent a workaround to disabling that feature, we would immediately ban that bus and probably arrest everyone involved in making and selling it.
Instead our government wants to make the passengers sort it out.
Can’t you ban certain prompts though? Not trying to catch you out just genuinely asking
To an extent, it would certainly help. Ultimately someone will find a way to trick it into ignoring that, and that method will spread and then you have to stop that too.
I was more just trying to point out that it's not "almost no work" there's no off switch for nsfw content. If the responsible teams said it was going to cost a million to stop this I'd say that's perfectly reasonable keeping in mind it cost billions to train. It's going to take a team of some of the highest paid software engineers a few weeks to almost fully stop this.
I guess you could also just turn it off temporarily and stop it now too until it's ready.
I like the other suggested solution of have a separate, disconnected AI moderating the output of the first AI but it's not cheap
Um, aren't X responsible? This is such a very strange approach.
Is he getting paid off or just cool with the images being produced?
Elon Musk has not only allowed, but encouraged in good humour this trend of sexual harassment and the generation of child sexual abuse images. That's what we are talking about here. For the minister to say "ah well sure it ain't Elon's fault" is extremely disturbing to me.
Not true. Legally they have to have and enforce a content policy
God love him but this fella isn't the sharpest tool in the box
Patrick O'Donovan, the Media minister who presumably had to ask how many letters were in RTÉ, is exactly the man to meet this moment
Christ
These are the same people that want you to need your passport to use the internet because save the kids lol
This is the guy who wanted us all to give up our digital rights to "protect" women and children only a few weeks ago, now basically using the '"guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument in relation to CSAM. Reprehensible.
Contact your tds and ask them if they agree that supplying access to to questionable information like grok does is something they dont see an issue with.
Both. Both are responsible.
We should be fining the ever-living daylights out of X for failing to protect its user base, and we should be arresting and charging anyone that instructs an AI to generate CSAM.
Everyone agrees on the second part. It's crazy that O'Donovan's arguing against the first part. Well, not that crazy seeing as he's one of the most incompetent ministers we've had in recent years.
Fine Gael once again showing they are ideologically opposed to regulating any multinational company, even when they are creating something as heinous as CSAM.
Elon Musk is literally laughing about the disgusting content that is being created and shared on his website.
These people should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.
The same man who just last week was saying that the protection of children trumps privacy now isn't so concerned about it.
You know what, I partially agree.
Grok has topped the app download charts in Ireland since this story broke. Perverts and criminals have found out about this "functionality" and want to commit some sexual offences.
So, yeah, the app shouldn't exist, but these people are a big fucking problem.
WOW!
WHAT A SPINELESS PRICK
The website was just following orders.
“The law can’t keep up with technology” - nonsense. The law is there, it is the minister who can’t keep up with the law. He should resign. He is demonstrating either incompetence or a conflict of interest and an inability to maintain the law.
legally this is correct , legally speaking if a user prompt athe bot the user is at fault due to the fact its UGC( user generated content) EU law only says if they find anything the have to act ( if twitter was responsible it would be a boiling frog issue)
That's a totally unacceptable position for a minister to have. Grow a spine and actually hold a MNC to account for a change!
Government of the few, by the few, for the few
O'Donovan has time and again proved himself to be not capable of high office.
I literally reported to X that there was some awful stuff with animals on there. The s-abuse type (i cant remember the word rn and i dont want that in my search history) and they said there is nothing wrong with the posts I found. Thats when I closed my account. I didnt realize sick shit like that was on there. I literally found those pages because my friends I used to play a game called how many clicks to porn. IT TOOK 3 to get to images that I literally threw up afterwards to
It’s darkly funny that he cares more about RTÉ tweeting emojis than people producing CSAM, but mainly in a “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry” way
This screams "im not getting involved"
It's embarrassing that you get to be this stupid and still be a minister.
Funny, when Taylor Swift threatened to sue when Twitter users were making pornographic deepfakes of her, they were quick to sort it out
He wants to keep his options open in the future to go into consultancy like so many politicians?
No benefit to him in pissing off his future employer. Especially when he clearly thinks so little about his current one (the public)
This contradicts Junior Minister Niamh Smith on the radio this morning. She was pretty pissed off at X and Musk. Any decent company would have coded this shit out.
This is a global issue for X. Amazed its's being allowed to stand...
O'Donovan's position is appalling....
Elon musk supplies child pornography
"if the people bribing me think it's ok, it's ok"
Disgraceful comment. X/Grok can turn off the feature.
Agree with this. It's like blaming the camera for producing child abuse images instead of the person who actually abused the child. These people shouldn't be getting to hide behind the tool they used and heaping the blame on that instead of on themselves.
Any Irish person that generates this should be arrested and charged.
Likewise, X failed to uphold their own terms of service and should reimburse the taxpayer as a result.
These two schools of thought are not mutually exclusive.
If a camera had AI button that did what Grok is doing, removing children's clothes from photos, wouldn't the camera manufactures be at fault for that?
Come on now. Really? This is how the Irish government protects it’s citizens? Shameful really.
Check his hard drives