It’s Media Minister Patrick O’Donovan, not the law, that can’t keep up with technology, according to Social Democrats TD Sin\u00e9ad Gibney.<\/p>\n
Deputy Gibney, who sits on the Oireachtas AI Committee, said:<\/p>\n
“Nobody is denying that users who request Child Sexual Abuse Images bear legal responsibility for the production of those images. But X, the platform which produced and posted those images, is also implicated in the crimes that have taken place.<\/p>\n
\u201cElon Musk\u2019s move to restrict this form of Grok image generation to paying subscribers does not address the problem – tens of thousands of these images were generated over the past number of weeks.<\/p>\n
“I was shocked to hear Minister O’Donovan say that X is not responsible for their own bot creating and publishing child sexual abuse images. The government is allowing Big Tech companies to cause untold harm, create and post criminal material, and evade responsibility.<\/p>\n
“The Minister deleting his X account but refusing to sanction X is pointless virtue signalling, and sums up his approach to online harm, where the onus for making harmful platforms safe is put squarely on individuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is easy to blame the speed of technology for these gaps but a long list of legal experts have already said that current laws are more than enough to allow us to act urgently – it’s not the law that can’t keep up with this technology, it’s the Minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cTime and again when I and others have raised other forms of harm online, it has been painfully clear that this government has no intention of rocking the boat with Big Tech.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis light touch approach to regulation has meant that other online harms like unsafe AI chatbots have gone ignored by this government, and those who have had their images manipulated are left to deal with the consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a firm legal basis to prosecute X for the production of these images – it\u2019s imperative that the government stands up for those affected and holds X to account.\u201d<\/p>\n
January 9th, 2026<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s Media Minister Patrick O’Donovan, not the law, that can’t keep up with technology, according to Social Democrats TD Sin\u00e9ad Gibney. Deputy Gibney, who sits on the Oireachtas AI Committee, said: “Nobody is denying that users who request Child Sexual Abuse Images bear legal responsibility for the production of those images. But X, the platform […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[593,592,7,497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai","category-online-safety","category-press-release","category-sinead-gibney"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n