Irish Examiner View: Need for regulation of social media and AI is evident

There has been widespread anger after the image tool for Grok was used to manipulate thousands of images of women and sometimes children. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

AI has been a lively topic of discussion in recent days, not least because of the lord mayor of Cork’s admission that he relies on AI for his speeches.

A far darker side of AI technology was revealed this week when Cormac O’Keeffe reported on findings shared by Children at Risk in Ireland (Cari), a sexual abuse treatment service for young children.

Sour times for sweet tooths

Loving her chocolate egg is Fiadh Owen, Ballincollig, at the 2023 Easter Egg hunt at Fota House, Cork. Picture: Dan Linehan

For those with a sweet tooth, the facts are a little distasteful.

Various costs the confectionery industry must deal with — ranging from shipping, packaging, sugar prices, milk, and cocoa — have risen in recent years, with the consequences filtered out across the industry, and not for the better.

As explained here this week by Caitríona Redmond, some manufacturers are now using more palm oil in chocolate products to compensate for poor quality cocoa, but a decrease in the amount of cocoa means a product may not actually qualify as a chocolate bar.

Last year, for instance, popular bars such as Club and Penguin no longer had enough cocoa content to be described as chocolate bars.

The bad news continues with egg shrinkage. Many readers will have noticed that some chocolate eggs have decreased in size by as much as 30% in the last eight years — discouraging news as Easter approaches, particularly as the drop in size has not been accompanied by a drop in price.

In a final blow, it also appears that even the smaller Easter eggs, such as Dairy Milk Freddo Faces, have shrunk from 96g to 90g in the last year.

Is nothing sacred?