{"id":457575,"date":"2026-05-20T01:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T01:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/457575\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T01:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T01:25:11","slug":"ai-chatbots-leading-children-into-terrible-harm-oireachtas-committee-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/457575\/","title":{"rendered":"AI chatbots leading children into \u2018terrible harm\u2019, Oireachtas committee hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI) chatbots are leading children into \u201cterrible harm\u201d and can push people towards sexualised and pro-eating disorder content, an Oireachtas<\/a> committee has heard.<\/p>\n

Noeline Blackwell, of the Children\u2019s Rights Alliance<\/a> (CRA), on Tuesday said chatbots and erotic companion tools, such as AI girlfriends, are matters causing rising concern.<\/p>\n

Blackwell told the Oireachtas Committee on Artifical Intelligence the alliance is encountering \u201cmore and more\u201d instances where \u201cchatbots are leading children into terrible harm, including suicide, as has happened recently in the UK\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said fake, AI-generated material poses \u201cgreater risks for children than adults\u201d as they have more difficulty identifying false information.<\/p>\n

Blackwell was responding to a question from Social Democrats<\/a> TD Sin\u00e9ad Gibney about emerging threats, beyond the impact of images generated by Grok<\/a>, the AI tool on social media platform X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The committee previously heard 244 referrals had been made to the Garda<\/a> concerning intimate image abuse created by nudification or AI generation<\/a> software. About half of those related to child abuse imagery, Garda Assistant Commissioner Angela Willis told the committee in March<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Olga Cronin, senior policy officer with the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), told the committee the \u201cGrok scandal\u201d demonstrated that AI systems can \u201cfacilitate the creation and dissemination of illegal and deeply harmful content\u201d at speed and scale.<\/p>\n

The State and the European Union possess the legislative tools and powers to respond, she noted, adding that \u201cvisible and timely enforcement\u201d was needed to ensure public confidence.<\/p>\n

Cronin said the ICCL had no issue with the banning of \u201cnudification\u201d apps, but the \u201creal problem\u201d was that \u201cmost general purpose AI models can create this kind of material\u201d.<\/p>\n

Blackwell called for the continuous review of the risk level of image generation and deepfake applications, with the EU AI Act having designated this software as of \u2018limited risk\u2019 when the technology was less advanced.<\/p>\n

Her colleague, Alex Murphy, said the CRA believes chatbots should \u201cinherently by deemed as high risk\u201d with some exceptions for the software being designated as limited risk.<\/p>\n

Murphy said chatbots have been observed pushing people towards suicide, but also \u201cinappropriate and sexualised content, eating disorder content\u201d. She said people develop \u201cpsychological dependencies\u201d on these chatbots.<\/p>\n

Blackwell, formerly the chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said there is an \u201cawful lot of information being collected about children through school programmes\u201d being enabled by AI.<\/p>\n

She said a \u201cwide variety\u201d of educational technology is being used in schools. While those programmes may be beneficial, the CRA \u201cdon\u2019t see\u201d how children\u2019s data rights are being \u201cproperly observed\u201d in the absence of proper licensing systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, no system exists for the certification, assessment or licensing of EdTech systems in schools,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result, there is no guide for educators nor is it possible to assess the extent to which the various current programmes comply with children\u2019s rights in this regard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are leading children into \u201cterrible harm\u201d and can push people towards sexualised and pro-eating…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,45,218,219,9687,198461,124976,4069,61,60,43927,12636,1419,80,606],"class_list":["post-457575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-childcare","tag-children-s-rights-alliance","tag-dublin-rape-crisis-centre","tag-grok","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-council-for-civil-liberties","tag-oireachtas","tag-social-democrats","tag-technology","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}