The State’s online safety commissioner is “very concerned” at the rise of child sex-abuse images generated by artificial intelligence.
Niamh Hodnett said it was an area that the new media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, was engaging with online platforms in relation to regularly.
“There’s two types [of child sex-abuse] we’re concerned about,” she said on Thursday.
“One is self-generated child sex-abuse material that would be generated by children often in their bedroom unbeknown to their parents for sextortion or other purposes.
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“Then we’re also concerned about AI-generated child sex-abuse material, so this is being generated by artificial intelligence.
“Both are increasing in prevalence and we’re very concerned about that.”
Ms Hodnett was speaking at the launch of Coimisiún na Meán’s first three-year strategy, which focuses on protecting children, holding platforms to account, ensuring a media “landscape” that supports democracy and tackling disinformation.
She said child sex-abuse material was covered by the EU’s Digital Services Act and the regulator’s online safety framework. “That’s an area that we engage with them regularly on and we’re very concerned about ... we have a full arsenal of tools to be able to deal with that,” she said.
John Evans, Coimisiún na Meán’s digital services commissioner, said 15 out of the 35 large online platforms were based in Ireland.
He said while the commission had been getting “positive engagement” from the platforms, this “doesn’t translate necessarily into compliance, and that’s what we’re seeing”.
“The reality is, and I’m sure the platforms would disagree with us, this is a new area of regulation for them,” Mr Evans said.
“If you look to the area of data protection for example, that was a difficult journey for the regulator and for the regulated entities. We anticipate similar pushback and we’re seeing similar pushback from platforms.”
He also said it had so far recruited just one “trusted flagger” – which are experts at detecting certain types of illegal content online.
Separately, Jeremy Godfrey, executive chairperson of the regulator, denied that the decision by Minister for Arts and Media Patrick O’Donovan not to impose a levy on streaming sites such as Netflix “undermined” Coimisiún na Meán.
Mr O’Donovan has said he will bring a memo to Cabinet that would seek to block any plans by the commission to impose a levy on streamers, saying the public were paying enough already.
“It’s a ministerial decision about how you trade off the impact on consumers against the potential benefits for the industry and being able to support that,” Mr Godfrey said.
“That is a policy matter for ministers and it is entirely appropriate that the Minister should make the decision he made.”
Mr Godfrey also denied that he had been “thrown under the bus” by Mr O’Donovan.
“I think what the Minister wants to do is bring some clarity to the situation, so schemes need to be approved by the minister under the current legislation,” he said.
“There’s nothing explicit in the legislation that says a levy needs to be approved. The policy is to bring clarity to that. I think that’s fine as far as we’re concerned, but there’s no question of being thrown under a bus. I think we have a very good relationship with the minister.”
Mr Godfrey said the feasibility study had been sent to Mr O’Donovan and it would be published over the coming weeks with any commercially sensitive information removed.
Coimisiún na Meán also said it was preparing for this year’s presidential election and would be sharing the results of research it conducted into candidates’ experiences of online abuse during last year’s elections.
Aoife MacEvilly, commissioner for broadcasting and video on demand, said it supported “transformation within RTÉ” after a voluntary redundancy plan was announced at the broadcaster on Wednesday.
“We do know they need to change and I think that’s very much part of their approach to delivering better services for the public,” she said.
“We don’t have a particular view on any aspect of it other than we want it to deliver better outcomes for audiences.”
