Irish artists need protection from AI age, Dáil hears

Members of the opposition have said that the government needs to do more to protect artists from AI.

The motion, put forward by Sinn Féin in the Dáil by arts spokesperson Aengus Ó Snodaigh, received support not just from opposition parties, but from people outside the world of politics.

The Script frontman Danny O’Donoghue was among those from the world of music who lent their support to the motion.

Speaking to reporters, the singer likened AI to theft.

“If someone was going around and stealing and taking all the sweets out of every single shop on Grafton Street, they’d be hauled into the police station straight away,” he remarked.

O’Donoghue said, “we must stand up for the creators who have dedicated their lives to this craft, which is the foundation of Irish culture and give them what they deserve – their consent, fair pay and transparency.”

O’Donoghue was speaking after Dublin singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy sold out two nights at the Aviva, and O’Donoghue stated that the AI threat is so exestential, there would be no successful Irish artists like Dermot Kennedy.

Former Minister for the Arts Catherine Martin said “Ireland has an opportunity to lead the conversation on creators’ rights during its Presidency of the Council of the European Union.”

“We hope this motion builds momentum for meaningful, practical action,” the former Minister said.

During her tenure as Minister for Arts, Martin said she wanted to “future-proof” Irish artists from any challenges that came their way; the former Dublin Rathdown TD became Minister in 2020, shortly before the rise of generative AI in mid-2022.

The Dáil heard contributions from various opposition TDs laying out their stance on AI, with progressive parties, unsurprisingly, showing a strong stance on AI.

The rise of AI has been tied to the likes of Donald Trump whisperer Peter Thiel and the newly-minted trillionaire Elon Musk, and the Dáil’s left-of-centre parties showed no interest in having AI erode Ireland’s famous arts scene.

Ó Snodaigh stated, “we are living through the greatest art heist in history.”

“The entire corpus of global achievement in writing, music, film and the visual arts is up for grabs and is being used and abused for corporate greed. Whole books and poems are being garbled up and plagiarised in output presented as original work.”

The Dublin South Central TD noted that Spotify has had to remove 75 million tracks after they were found to be AI and not by real artists.

“Theft is being rewarded, and creativity is being punished,” he stated.

“The livelihoods of human and Irish artists need to continue to be supported. Domestic legislation needs to be established for an appropriate framework for the licence transparency, fair remuneration, personality rights to guard against impersonation, collective bargaining and civil liability on upsales and much more,” the Sinn Féin arts spokesperson said.

Independent TD Paul Gogarty – who has been known to dabble in music and memorably referenced Chappell Roan in the Dáil chamber in early 2025 – invoked the 80s alt group Pop Will Eat Itself during the AI debate.

The Dublin Mid-West TD said, “I do see genuine uses of AI as a tool to speed up your creative process and to generate ideas based on your own original human spark and ideas, but, to be clear, the dangers for artists vastly outweigh the benefits, and that needs to be redressed.”

“What is happening brings the name of the band from the 1980s Pop Will Eat Itself to entirely new levels,” he remarked.

Gogarty explained, “AI bottom trawls for free, pays nobody their due reward and then regenerates original ideas into a mishmash that sounds plausible, reads plausible and looks plausible, were it not for the fact that the AI output is input-output. It is only as good as what it trawls through.”

The independent TD said “we have seen the rise of AI artists, AI music, AI authors and AI video generators. Admittedly, some of them are parodies but others are deliberate scams to outline the possibilities of the technology.”

“Increasingly, things are being created for their own sake and the profits do not go to any original artists. Nobody can tell which aspect of a work is being used in the generative process, but it is guaranteed that the graft of artists is nowhere in it. What emerges are not the original ideas of AI, the programmers or the big multinationals that own these companies.

Labour TD Ciáran Ahern noted that generative AI is developing at an “extraordinary speed.”

He said that the party supports “responsible” AI development, but stated, “innovation cannot become a licence for exploitation.”

“The exploitation and dehumanisation of creativity by big tech is not some conspiracy. It is already happening. Every day we delay action to address this, the gap between technological capability and legal protection grows wider.”

Ahern stated, “we should reaffirm our commitment to Ireland’s creative future, and to our actors, musicians, screenwriters, designers, animators, comedians, cinematographers and all those whose artistry enriches our lives.”

“Above all, we must insist that our creative industries remain industries built on imagination, emotion, experience and collaboration, and not plagiarised AI-generated slop.”

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett noted the links between the AI industry and the Donald Trump sphere of influence.

“The government has bought the Kool-Aid, and so has the European Commission, it seems. Certainly Donald Trump does not pretend about his relationship with these monsters, quite frankly, in many cases, when you think about Palantir and Peter Thiel and what they do with AI, using it to help prosecute a genocide in Gaza.”

The Dún Laoghaire TD stated, “these people are horrific. I have difficulty with the idea that this has anything useful to contribute.”

He asserted that while he didn’t believe that AI had any practical uses, he noted that “people actually want to replace human beings and human creativity with AI.”

He said that particular train of thought “would literally be the road to disaster for humanity.”

“Some people think about AI as if it is cutting edge and the most advanced thing possible, but AI is like the Neanderthal. The Neanderthal had a bigger brain than the human being but it went extinct because its huge brain was mainly dealing with memory and sensory processing and was not able to do the higher functions that the human brain does.”

The People Before Profit leader mused, “what makes us unique, and what made the human being adapt successfully while the Neanderthal died out, is our creative capacity. I refer to our capacity to imagine things that do not exist and not just to scrape memory.”

“The problem with scraping memory is that it does not involve developing something new. It is not real innovation; it is just mixing around existing memories.”

“That was why the Neanderthal went extinct. What will happen if we leave creativity and the future of human society to AI?” he asked.

From the government side, junior Minister Charlie McConalogue said the government hopes to use the Presidency of the Council of the European Union to advance European-wide standards on AI usage.

“We have a valuable opportunity to help shape discussions on the future of Europe’s digital and creative economy, including measures needed to support a sustainable, pluralistic and trusted media sector.”

“In terms of the broader impacts of AI, the European Commission is currently working on a new strategy specifically looking at AI and the creative and cultural sector, as set out in the new European cultural strategy, the Culture Compass for Europe. This will be an opportunity for our sectors to address the challenges and opportunities of this moment of change. Ireland looks forward to participating in the development of the strategy in the coming months,” he said.

The Fianna Fáil TD said that the government was open to working with opposition parties on the issue.

“We look forward to working with everyone across the House in relation to building on the work that has been done and the great amount of work that needs to be done to protect what is an integral part of our national life. It is really important, from a European perspective, that we work collectively to protect the sector,” he said.