The number of investigations gardaí are performing into images generated by X’s AI chatbot Grok has risen to 244, a Garda Assistant Commissioner told an Oireachtas committee.
Angela Willis, the assistant commissioner with responsibility for organised and serious crime, told the Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence there were 244 referrals to the Garda concerning intimate image abuse “relating to children that we believe have been generated through AI”.
This marks an increase in the number of cases being investigated by the Garda in the wake of the nudification controversy around the use of Grok, the AI bot belonging to the Elon Musk-owned social media network X.
The Garda had told another Oireachtas committee in January that there were 200 active investigations into child sexual abuse images generated by Grok.
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Willis clarified that all 244 cases related to images generated by Grok and that “less than 10″ of cases into intimate images of adults created by AI had been reported to the Garda.
“Another committee was told there are 200 active investigations into child sexual abuse images generated by the xAI chatbot Grok,” People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said, asking if any of those investigations are into the management of X, as opposed to those who prompted the creation of the images.
Willis said about half of those investigations “do relate to child abuse imagery, or child pornography as it is defined”, noting that gardaí “will go wherever the evidence takes us”.
“That might first be a user,” she said, but that the Garda will take the investigations “as far as we can”.
“We are not ruling anything out,” she told the committee.
Willis said the investigations could be “lengthy” and might cross multiple jurisdictions, but that the Garda would “spare no effort”.
The committee was also told that the force will adopt the use of AI technology when the law allows “automating the onerous task of reviewing hundreds of hours of CCTV footage, or thousands of images of online child sexual exploitation material”, she said.
Willis said the use of the technology would minimise gardaí’s exposure to harmful online content “through utilising AI tools to process and filter large volumes of online abuse material”.
She stressed that gardaí would ensure that a human would always be the decision-maker.
[ More councils boycott X over Grok AI sexual images controversyOpens in new window ]
In her opening statement, Willis said: “We are no longer just policing physical streets; we are policing a digital landscape where crime moves at the speed of a fibre-optic cable.”
Dr Elaine Byrne, chairwoman of the Policing and Community Safety Authority, said it would oversee the adoption of AI by the Garda with the goal of ensuring it would be used in a “necessary, proportionate and lawful” manner.
She said the Policing and Community Safety Authority would ensure it is used in an ethical manner and that its use “protects, vindicates and doesn’t inappropriately infringe” upon human rights.
Byrne said using AI in policing was “different”, noting there were “heightened considerations around its introduction and use”.
Gardaí were engaging with dating app companies around romance scams, which are “one of the highest areas where people are being targeted”, Willis said.
She told the committee that AI was playing a part in the rise of online scams and that one period of heightened scam activity was around Valentine’s Day.
She said the policing force actively engaged with dating app companies about these types of scams to identify how companies and the Garda could protect people from these scams.
