Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Niamh Smyth has criticised X over Grok AI turning photos of women and minors into sexually suggestive deepfake images.

The Fianna Fáil TD told Newstalk Breakfast that the dissemination of explicit images of women and children through an AI chatbot, was illegal under Irish and European law and that there already was “a very robust framework in place” to prevent the dissemination of such images.

Ms Smyth said she was seeking a meeting with X. She said she would tell the social media company that “this is not legal, it is not acceptable, it is apparent, and it should be stopped”.

The Minister of State acknowledged that the issue had “reached a peak over the past number of days” and defended the Government’s stance to date.

“The Irish Government and the previous government as well did a huge amount of work to ensure the laws were in place. I am very confident the laws are in place.

“This is really about enforcement. It is about Coimisiún na Meán, a regulator, acting with the European Commission, working with the guards. We have laws in place and they need to be enforced and you would hope that there is some moral compass within X and Twitter that they would ensure that the Irish public are not subjected to harmful content.”

Twitter, which has been operating since 2006, was rebranded to X in 2023 after being taken over by Elon Musk.

Meanwhile, Women’s Aid has said it is ending its use of the social media platform X.

Its chief Sarah Benson said the organisation no longer views it as appropriate to use X to share their work after seeing increased levels of unchecked hate, misogyny, racism and anti-LGBTI+ content on the platform as well as online violence against women and children.

“The current scandal which has seen the creation and sharing of AI deepfakes, non-consensual intimate imagery, and production of child sexual abuse material by X’s own AI Grok, in breach of the platform’s own guidelines and regulations, is a tipping point,” she said.

She said the decision to no longer maintain a presence on X was “not an easy one” as Women’s Aid has been a user of social media including X, or Twitter as it was previously known, since 2009.

“We have engaged with and informed our supporters of the prevalence and impact of domestic abuse, promote our frontline support services to those affected and push for positive social change,” Ms Benson said.

She said that she and the Women’s Aid organisation “firmly believe that social media platforms have a crucial role to play in a healthy society, providing crucial townhall spaces for thoughtful, respectful, constructive and positive dialogue.

“By leaving we acknowledge that we are ceding the stage to the malign actors and bots who will continue to overrun the space creating and spreading disinformation and other harmful content with effective impunity.

“However, as an organisation working to end violence against women and children, we balance the costs with any benefits to our continued engagement in this space and find we can no longer tolerate this situation,” she said.

X has been contacted for comment.