Cuirim fáilte roimh an Bille seo inniu. It addresses one of the most insidious frontiers of crime in modern Ireland. For years, we watched technology outpace our laws but today it is outpacing our own sense of human dignity. We are living in an era where nudification has become a service and predators do not even need a camera to destroy a life. All they need is an algorithm. We stood in this Chamber and spoke about Coco's Law as landmark legislation, and it was, but technology is moving fast and the Government's system is moving too slow for it. Today, we are witnessing the rise of a new industry of misery - AI-generated deepfakes. Right now, a predator can take the face of a young girl from social media, run it through a nudification app, generate pornographic material of her and, because this image is technically a computer-generated image, the Government's current laws are not able to keep up. Rather, they ask whether it is an intimate image or a real person. While the Government's law debates the definitions, real persons get destroyed. This Bill asserts a vital truth; any of these materials are real harm. We must criminalise the actual creation of these images from the outset. We know that hotline.ie received 1,500 reports of intimate image abuse last year and only a fraction of these ever resulted in a conviction. Gardaí are fighting a digital war with their hands tied behind their back. Under the current two-year statute limits, the clock often expires before a tech company in California, or even Dublin, responds to a data request. Agencies such as the Data Protection Commission and Coimisiún na Meán need more than laws. They need the power and resources to enforce those laws, including the ability to fine companies into compliance. It is estimated that 6,700 sexually abusive images are produced by AI every single hour, 99% of which target women and children. Hotline.ie reported a 166% increase last year in computer-generated or computer-altered child abuse materials. Last week, the Oireachtas committee was treated very shoddily by major tech companies. X refused to appear. Others refused to give information about how many children are using their services and have admitted to refusing to building in the necessary safety to the design. Grok is not alone in the production of this material. Merlio AI, Soulgen, nudify-online, undress AI, DreamGF, deepnude.cc, Promptchan AI and Candy.ai all facilitate nudification tools. One video generation tool, owned by the Chinese giant Alibaba, allows for this material to be created. It allows anybody to upload an image and do anything they like with that image. ByteDance, which is a parent company of TikTok, offers an unmoderated video generation tool as well. Six years ago, Aontú introduced a Bill looking for the banning of the provision of hardcore pornography to children. When we raised it, the Government turned its face against it, even though there is massive evidence that children are being distorted by this material and are being led to assaults in relation to it. We need to make sure that we look at the whole swathe of Internet content that is having significant negative effects on the minds of our young children.

Sentiment score: -0.12