Southside politicians call for firmer action on Twitter

Political parties and organisations have left Twitter this week, following a scandal involving AI-generated images of child sexual abuse.

Grok, Twitter’s in-house AI, has become the subject of major controversy after users discovered it had AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

The AI scandal is the latest in a long line of scandals to hit Twitter since Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform in late 2022, with the social media platform seeing an exodus of users to alternative platforms such as Bluesky and Mastodon.

In January 2025, following Elon Musk’s Nazi salute at the second inauguration of Donald Trump, the site saw millions of users quit the platform as Musk’s embracing of Donald Trump and his brand of far-right politics drew users and advertisers away.

Once a main hub for political communication across the world, it has been revealed that the Green Party have made the decision to quit the platform, as have organisations such as Women’s Aid.

The Green Party confirmed this week that they made a decision to leave Twitter last December, as did party leader Roderic O’Gorman.

The party told the Irish Examiner, “while the party will cease posting on the platform, it is up to individual spokespeople and councillors to decide their continued use on their personal accounts.”

A spokesperson for Fianna Fáil told the Southside People that their Minister of State for AI, Niamh Smyth, has written to Twitter asking for a meeting about how the social media platform plans to rectify the issues.

The party said that Minister Smyth has also been in contact with Coimisiún na Meán and with the Office of the Attorney General to “seek updates on how this matter is being assessed from a legal and regulatory perspective.”

“Engagement by any political party with online platforms must be informed by these obligations and by the need to protect people from harm, particularly the most vulnerable,” they said on Wednesday.

They said that if a member of the public is concerned about images being shared online, they should report the matter to the Gardaí.

Separately, a spokesperson for the Social Democrats told the Southside People, “the state should be adopting a much stronger stance against clear breaches of the law on Twitter, with criminal investigations being pursued,” adding that the party’s usage of the platform is “under review.

“The difficulty with organisations leaving is that it leaves behind an online space in which hateful content and/or misinformation spreads without being challenged and where alternative viewpoints are not represented,” they noted.

Women’s Aid announced they were leaving the platform on Thursday, with Sarah Benson, Women’s Aid CEO, saying “the organisation has watched the increased levels of unchecked hate, misogyny, racism and anti-LGBTI+ content on the platform with growing unease and concern.”

“The current scandal, which has seen the creation and sharing of AI deepfakes, non-consensual intimate imagery, and production of child sexual abuse material by X’s own AI Grok, in breach of the platform’s own guidelines and regulations, is a tipping point.”

Benson said, “this online violence against women and children – especially girls – has often devastating real life impacts and we no longer view it as appropriate to use such a platform to share our work.

She noted, “this has not been an easy decision,” as Women’s Aid set up a Twitter account in 2009, the early days of the platform.

“We have engaged with and informed our supporters of the prevalence and impact of domestic abuse, promote our frontline support services to those affected and push for positive social change.”

She said, “we firmly believe that social media platforms have a crucial role to play in a healthy society, providing crucial townhall spaces for thoughtful, respectful, constructive and positive dialogue.”

“By leaving we acknowledge that we are ceding the stage to the malign actors, and bots who will continue to overrun the space, creating and spreading disinformation and other harmful content with effective impunity. However, as an organisation working to end violence against women and children, we balance the costs with any benefits to our continued engagement in this space and find we can no longer tolerate this situation.”

The Women’s Aid CEO said “while we have reduced leverage on this platform, we call on governments and regulators in both Ireland and at EU level to act swiftly and decisively to create effective accountability, legislation and regulation to ensure companies must have guardrails that protect truth, and prevent harm so that in the future any user can use Twitter, and any online platform safely.”

On Friday morning, before Southside People went to print, media Minister Patrick O’Donovan confirmed he had deleted his Twitter account, telling Limerick’s Live95 “I don’t feel comfortable with the fact that there’s people that are going to use my image, or your image, or somebody else’s image and artificially generate something around it and maybe make it into something that it shouldn’t.”

O’Donovan became an early contender for the 2026 foot-in-mouth award, previously stating that Twitter was not responsible for the generation of child sexual abuse material; it was individual users who were responsible.

Local Green Party councillor Ray Cunningham criticised the lack of moderation and the promotion of far-right politics on Twitter, remarking, “it has been turning into a cesspit.”

He said the production of child sexual abuse material by Twitter’s AI is a “whole new level of awful that we can’t and won’t ignore.”

The Ballyfermot-Drimnagh councillor said the decision was “the right thing to do, but sometimes there is a cost to doing the right thing,” noting that the Green Party had a presence on Twitter since 2007 with tens of thousands of followers. 

Speaking to Southside People in January 2025, Cunningham noted that the likes of Irish Rail, the Luas and the Irish government still post on Twitter as a matter of practicality.

“If you want as many people as possible to see what you are saying, it’s difficult to cut off an information channel, but Twitter seems to be in rapid decline, with fewer people there or only there, and less interaction,” he noted at the time.

A year later, Cunningham’s prediction proved correct; the most recent round of user statistics from June 2025 revealed that 132 million people were active users of the social media platform, a major drop from the 200 million at the same time in 2023.

While Bluesky “doesn’t contain as much abuse” per Cunningham, he said, “it is still a private space owned by a billionaire; I don’t use it because I approve of it politically.”

Local Sinn Féin TD Máire Devine said, “artificial intelligence in social media now enables mass creation and distribution of sexual content, including deep fakes and nudification. Child sexual abuse material generated by AI is emerging rapidly, and manual takedown processes cannot keep pace with the production of this harmful material.”

“Make no mistake, this is nothing less than vile digital domestic, sexual, and gender-based violence. Twitter must immediately disable the nudification functionality in its AI tools and remove all such content from its platform,” the Dublin South Central TD said.

Devine noted that there is existing legislation within Irish law to prevent images of people from being distributed, with the Harassment, Harmful Communications & Related Offences Act 2020 (also known as Coco’s Law) criminalising non-consensual distribution of intimate images, including deep fakes. 

“Coimisiún na Meán should act swiftly and decisively to compel Twitter to disable the nudification functionality in its Grok AI tool in order to prevent the spread of this heinous and illegal content.”

Devine noted that the creation of deep fakes is not criminalised, and as Coco’s Law was made law in 2020, prior to the generative AI boom, images produced by AI do not fall under existing legislation.

She noted that new European legislation will require a disclosure that content is AI-generated, but it does not regulate the creation of said images.

“Ireland’s AI Advisory Council has recommended a specific offence for creating deep fakes without consent, which I fully support and will be pursuing in the Oireachtas,” she said.

Devine has called on the Coimisiún na Meán to be proactive on this issue and put existing legislation into action.

“The online world has become a major site of sexual violence, exploitation, and misogynistic influence. Decisive action is required to prevent the reinforcement and expansion of power of these aggressors. Digital harms are real-world harms, and we must do more to protect people in this arena. Coimisiún na Meán must act urgently and meaningfully on this.”

Local Social Democrats TD Sinéad Gibney, who found and led Google Ireland’s corporate social responsibility unit prior to her career in politics,  said that Coimisiún na Meán must “prove their worth” in light of the ongoing scandal.

“This agency cannot be fobbed off by European powers – it must take action domestically when our laws are violated.”

“Coimisiún na Meán’s Online Safety Code requires video-sharing platforms headquartered in Ireland to ban the uploading and sharing of harmful content, including child sex abuse material. This code will be nothing but a paper tiger if action is not taken against companies which violate it, as Twitter is doing now.”

The Dublin Rathdown TD noted that Part V of Ireland’s Electoral Reform Act, passed in 2022, has been “put on ice” due to pushback from Brussels and social media companies, and now is the time to resurrect the bill.

“This Act would establish safeguards against the likes of disinformation, yet the European Commission reserved the right to initiate pre-litigation proceedings against Ireland if Part V was commenced. This shows that Europe can be out of step with what’s required to protect our citizens from online harm,” she said.