{"id":654483,"date":"2026-10-14T12:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T12:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/654483\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T12:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T12:52:10","slug":"oireachtas-committee-members-sought-to-water-down-report-on-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/654483\/","title":{"rendered":"Oireachtas committee members ‘sought to water down report on artificial intelligence’"},"content":{"rendered":"

A disagreement has emerged at the Oireachtas artificial intelligence (AI) committee<\/a>, with some members claiming that others are attempting to \u201cwater down\u201d the committee\u2019s opinions regarding AI corporations and regulation.<\/p>\n

The committee is currently finalising its third interim report regarding AI in the Irish context, covering issues including the fallout from revelations that Grok<\/a>, the artificial intelligence (AI)<\/a> chatbot of social network X, had been used to digitally \u201cundress\u201d people<\/a> using existing photographs.<\/p>\n

Changes suggested by Malcolm Byrne<\/p>\n

At a meeting to discuss proposed amendments to the report, committee chair Malcolm Byrne suggested the draft report be updated to remove an assertion that the self-administered risk assessments favoured by AI companies \u201cwould not be accepted in any other industry\u201d, to be replaced with a paragraph stating \u201cthat AI should be subject to more demanding assessment before deployment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Byrne further suggested that a statement in the draft report \u2014 asking why if medical devices must be \u201cthoroughly vetted\u201d before reaching consumers then \u201cwhy are we not doing that with AI\u201d \u2014 be replaced with a paragraph asserting that \u201cthe relevant question is which assessment requirements are justified by the risks of particular AI applications\u201d.<\/p>\n

Grok provided sexualised images of children<\/p>\n

Separately, the draft report deals with a meeting last January with AI junior minister Niamh Smyth regarding evidence that Grok had been used by X members to digitally manipulate photographs of real people, including children, to produce sexualised images.<\/p>\n

At that meeting, People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy indicated to Ms Smyth that she had been misled by X regarding assertions that Grok had been blocked from creating sexual imagery from photos, a point he proved by declaring that one of his staff had been able to digitally undress him, with his permission.<\/p>\n

In the initial draft report, referring to the same meeting, Fine Gael TD James Geoghegan suggested any reference to the interaction between the minister of state and Mr Murphy should be removed, with any mention of the incident to be limited by reference to the transcript.<\/p>\n

At the meeting of committee members this week, it was agreed to leave in the reference to the incident however, and to instead include a link to the transcript within the paragraph under discussion.<\/p>\n

Of the deliberation underway to compile the report, Mr Murphy said that some Government TDs \u201chave been seeking to water down the draft report\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a time when we are seeing a major push to undermine regulation of Big Tech and AI at a European level, it is vital that we accurately reflect the stark evidence put before our committee,\u201d Mr Murphy said.<\/p>\n

\n AI represents a dangerous threat to democracy as well as our environment.\n <\/p>\n

“As a committee, we should be standing up in defence of fundamental rights, not the profits of Big Tech corporations.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, committee chair Mr Byrne said that there had been no \u201cdisagreement\u201d between members.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI actually think we strengthened some of the recommendations around criticisms of Grok. I don\u2019t think there was any disagreement there,\u201d Mr Byrne said.<\/p>\n

He added that, in his opinion, the only \u201crows\u201d had emerged from discussions regarding a potential windfall tax on tech companies and on the digital omnibus \u2014 a simplification measure for the EU\u2019s digital laws proposed by the European Commission last November, aiming to streamline the laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A disagreement has emerged at the Oireachtas artificial intelligence (AI) committee, with some members claiming that others are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,2334,219,605,61,60,58,80],"class_list":["post-654483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-elon-musk","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-social-media","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654483","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=654483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}