'It is truly harmful': Children's advocates 'gravely concerned' over lack of regulation of AI

Noeline Blackwell will tell Dáil committee the sharing of such nonconsensual deepfakes 'is not just illegal, it is truly harmful'.

The Children's Rights Alliance has said it is “gravely concerned” at the lack of regulation or safeguards for young people amid the onset of generative AI, especially as new protections have been delayed.

The alliance is to tell an Oireachtas committee it is its understanding the EU-level regulation of high-risk AI applications will now not commence before the end of 2027 — a year later than expected.

That is because of amendments to the pending EU AI Act, which are seeking to simplify the existing legislation, but with the side-effect of delaying its implementation.

Deepfake images and video have become increasingly commonplace over the past three years as successive AI models have become more sophisticated.

The controversy over social media platform X’s Grok chatbot ‘nudifying’ of images of real people without consent caused international scandal.

Noeline Blackwell, online safety coordinator with the alliance, will tell the Committee on Artificial Intelligence that even though that law is being amended, it will still not be sufficient to recognise some of the higher-risk AI chatbots which have emerged online in recent times, both due to the sheer pace of development of deepfake technology and because “children’s rights and their usage of technology were not, and are not, properly considered in the EU legislation”.

Ms Blackwell will tell the committee the sharing of such nonconsensual deepfakes “is not just illegal, it is truly harmful”.

“As a result of their generation, publication and dissemination, these images can be used to blackmail, bully, groom, threaten and abuse children and young people,” she will tell the committee.

She is expected to call for an audit of Ireland’s criminal law by the Department of Justice “to identify gaps and enact the necessary legislation to ensure children are fully protected online and offline”.

At the same committee hearing, senior policy officer with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) Olga Cronin will say both Ireland and the European Union “already possess significant legislative tools and investigatory powers” to respond to problematic AI content online.

The ICCL played a pivotal role in calling for X to be investigated by multiple regulators in the wake of the Grok deepfake scandal. 

She will tell the committee the council “does not know the status of these respective investigations", but will add the fact they were instigated at all demonstrates adequate legislation and investigatory powers are already in place.

“ Public confidence depends not only on the existence of legal powers but on visible and timely enforcement,” she will say.

Meanwhile, new research from the AI accountability lab at Trinity College Dublin suggests large-scale AI corporates have a degree of narrative and regulatory control over the manner in which they are covered and monitored which poses a “significant threat to the rule of law”.

“In addition to ‘narrative capture’ and the violations and contentious interpretations of antitrust, privacy, copyright and labour laws that were most recurrent, we also found that big AI frequently uses the notion that ‘regulation stifles innovation’ and that ‘red tape can stymy national interest’ to rationalise their control of the overall narrative,” said Dr Abeba Birhane, director of the accountability lab.