I welcome this legislation that updates Coco's Law, which made it an offence to share or threaten to share intimate images without consent. Much has changed in recent years. At the time, the legislation did not explicitly criminalise the generation of a sexualised image of someone without consent, the creation of deep fake images, the manipulation of existing images to make them sexual, or - and this is a fundamental part of the Bill - the production of harmful images, even if they are never shared. I have to ask why anyone would produce an image if not to share it. It is then there possibly as a coercive threat, which goes back to the fundamental reason for Coco's Law, which criminalises threatening as well as doing it. The creation should be banned, if it is possible to enforce, because AI has made these types of abuse dramatically easier. Deep fakes can be created from a single photograph. Child abuse imagery can be created without a real child being present and there are nudified versions of ordinary photographs. The second part of the Bill, which I welcome, changes the time for bringing a case from two to five years. Victims often discover the abuse long after it happens, so that is crucial. We need to be able to get at the individuals who are creating and disseminating the images and, as others have said, go after the companies. They are getting away too easily in Ireland and relatively easily in the European Union. We have to do it collectively as a federation of states. We have to stand up to these companies, whether they are in China, the US or anywhere else in the world.

Sentiment score: -0.15