Rose Conway-Walsh warns AI needs robust rules after ex image abuse
Rose Conway-Walsh spoke about the benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, praising the minister's plan but warning that strong safeguards are required. She urged accessible funding for small and medium businesses, protections for vulnerable public-service users, and robust regulation after recent abuses on the social media platform ex.
Main message
Rose Conway-Walsh said AI can bring cost reductions and productivity gains if the minister's plan is fully and promptly implemented, but stressed that without robust regulation AI can be "destructive and dangerous." She emphasised that simplification of rules must not become deregulation.
Support for small and medium businesses
She called for the millions announced for AI to be easy to access for small and medium businesses, warning that smaller firms lack resources and that AI should not become an added cost to businesses already struggling to survive.
Regulation and the EU agenda
Conway-Walsh warned that powerful interests will push for simplification to morph into deregulation and said this must be monitored, referencing the wider EU agenda and the Draghi report as part of that debate.
Public services and social inclusion
She cautioned that AI-driven public services can exclude people who are AI-illiterate, elderly, disabled, or who prefer human contact, and urged measures to ensure equal access so everyone receives the same treatment.
Recent social media abuses and policy response
She condemned the recent promotion of image-generation tools on Elon Musk's ex, saying users deliberately generated child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nude deep fakes predominantly of women. Conway-Walsh described this as sexual abuse at scale enabled by corporate and government negligence, welcomed the disabling of the image feature where illegal, and argued it should be disabled immediately across the globe.
We publish thousands of recordings to make Irish politics transparent and resistant to manipulation. Spotted an error? Report it — together we are building a reliable archive of Irish politics.
It is unfortunate that we're here discussing this AI at this particular time because obviously it forces us into a space that nobody wants to be in. So at the outset I would say I want to talk about the benefits and indeed the plan that you present there Minister. If everything within that plan is to be implemented to its fullest end in a timely manner then I think we will be making progress and certainly as a party and as myself being a spokesperson on Enterprise Tourism and Employment we will work with the Minister as well in progressing that. So it is true to say that it can bring many benefits to businesses and to individuals from reducing costs and improving productivity. One thing I would say to you around the many millions that were announced there is that we make it easy for small and medium businesses to be able to access that money in an easy way because small businesses won't have the resources to be able to be doing that. The last thing we want to do is for AI to end up costing the businesses who are already on their knees and struggling to survive. I think we need to be really conscious of that. The other thing I am glad to hear you say that simplification does not mean deregulation because that is enormously important. Now you will know that the drivers and some of the richest people in the world will be driving for that simplification to turn into deregulation and we must be acutely aware of that and stand up very robustly to not being sucked into that. I think that speaks to the whole EU agenda. I mean following the Draghi report as well, to get the difference between simplification and deregulation is hugely important and I think that needs to be monitored on an ongoing basis. And the other area I would say to you around when you refer to public services, obviously public services can be delivered in a very efficient way with AI but at the same time it can give cause and give rise to much social exclusion and I'm talking about people who aren't AI illiterate or indeed technological to people who are elderly, disabled, who are not used to that, who just want to talk to a human being on the other end of the phone. And because of AI they get one message after another after another, you know, that it is absolutely impossible for them to access public services. So I'd ask you again that you would be acutely aware of that and to put measures in place to ensure that everybody can access public services in the same way. Everybody deserves the same treatment. Now last week I was at the Stripe Young Scientist Exhibition and I saw for myself the wonderful and innovative projects created by students in my own county in Mayo and in Claremorris and across Malina and it was absolutely fantastic to see what they have achieved and I want to commend everybody involved in that and indeed the winner as well but to me everybody who was there was it was a winner. So AI is an is is the present and it's the future and it can be a force for great good but without robust regulation it can be destructive and dangerous and what we experienced this week particularly on social media platform ex exposes the darker reality. AI is only as ethical as the rules that govern it and right now those rules are failing us. Over recent weeks we have seen the disgusting and appalling behaviour from users on Elon Musk's ex who deliberately promoted the platform AI to grow to generate child sexual abuse material and non-consensual nude deep fake images predominantly of women. So let us be absolutely clear this is not experimentation, it is not curiosity and it is not victimless. It is sexual abuse facilitated at scale by technology and enabled by corporate and government negligence. It is vile and misogynistic, it is criminal sexual exploitation regardless of whether the image is synthetic or not and what makes it even more alarming is that it wasn't even hidden in the dark web and that will tell you the arrogance and the impertinence of some of these people who are promoting that. It happened in plain sight on a mainstream platform owned by one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet, one of the wealthiest individuals on the planet that has many followers in this country, I am sad to say. So ex choose to deploy a tool without adequate safeguards, without effective moderation and without regard for the predictable ways it would be abused by its users. So ex last week confirming Grok's image generation functions to pages. Right the feature feature is now being disabled I welcome that but it says in jurisdictions where actions are deemed illegal, it should be disabled immediately across the globe.
Thank you for downloading 🙏
If you publish this material on social media, we would be very grateful if you tagged VideoParliament. It helps us reach more people and keep building a transparent archive of Irish politics.
