AI nudification apps 'should not exist', online safety hotline says
Vivienne Clarke
The CEO of Hotline.ie, the service dedicated to combatting illegal online content, has said that AI engines that can manipulate images “should not exist in the world” and should be banned.
Michael Moran told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland that the “race for AI development” had to stop, as many AI engines were not moderated.
He was responding after Elon Musk's platform X announced measures to prevent its AI chatbot Grok from undressing images of real people, following global backlash over its generation of sexualised images of women and children.
Hotline.ie works to address illegal online content, including child sexual abuse material (CSAM), intimate image abuse, and other forms of online exploitation.
Mr Moran said of the new measures that "our initial reaction is that it's good, you have to welcome any change", but that "all of this was and could have been foreseen by the X organisation".
"To suggest that they are now bringing in safety and that they're to be lauded for it is just not acceptable.
“Is this the future? Is it to be run out like this with no guidelines and no guardrails in place and no safety built in... and then for the public to react and regulators and legislators to catch up?"
Mr Moran said that this would continue happening as "new functionality" is brought out.
“We're left with a situation where we know that AI can produce new notification apps. We know that AI can produce CSAM. So, is that okay that AI can do this?
"Because what we're going to be left with is... the big companies, they will moderate... but in the meantime, in the background, there are any number of AI engines that have no regulation.
"Functionality is really the key at the end of the day. This race for the development... and making it available to the general public really has to stop.
"You're going to get into a situation where... safety, regulation, moderation all get left behind. We've seen that now in the last couple of weeks, and we need to do something about that to stop it happening in the future.”
Mr Moran said there was “no legitimate reason” for nudification apps to exist. He said he had been calling for them to be banned for the two years since they first began to appear on the App store.
“It's touching on the integrity and the bodily integrity of humans and it should not exist in the world. There's no reason for it.
"Not only should they be banned, it should also be illegal for AI to produce CSAM in the first place.
“What he [Elon Musk] is basically saying is AI will still be able to do this, we're just going to moderate it.
"Well, we've seen how successful moderation has been in the last 30 years. It hasn't been. And so let's see that it's actually removed as an actual possibility.”
