The use of AI to create sexual abuse material is wrong. The Internet is saturated with this material and there are no restrictions on who can access it and no protections for children. The fixation on X is totally missing the point. Banning, deleting or cancelling X will not stop child sexual abuse material from being created. A Google search will bring up far more explicit results. It feels like there is some scapegoating here, and it is targeted at one company in particular, instead of acknowledging Government failures to protect children. We have seen numerous cases of people getting suspended sentences for having child sexual abuse material. The Government could legislate for harsher sentences and it does not. Why all the focus on X when victims of child sexual abuse are being failed by the Irish courts?

Instead of safeguarding children, the Government’s response is to introduce mandatory digital identification for social media. This will force people to hand over sensitive personal data to identity brokers that have no legitimate need to process it. We are told this is necessary for child protection but we are more than capable of protecting our data and our children ourselves. Irish and EU courts have repeatedly held that administrative convenience is not a sufficient justification for interference with our fundamental rights. The last thing we want to see is State-run social media where only one narrative or viewpoint is tolerated.

At a recent AI committee, Deputy Ó Cearúil raised concerns about the values of CEOs who may tender for State contracts. He essentially asked if CEOs who are anti-Government or anti-immigration could be excluded from winning State contracts. Why should the best company be excluded from winning a State contract because it is anti-Government? We can protect children by banning smartphones and pornography and by embedding watermarks in AI content. Mandating digital ID to use social media is completely unjustified and opens the door to mass State surveillance and data breaches.