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Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

irishtimes.com

51–60 of 102 posts

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#51
This is the entire proposed bill:

https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/bills/bill/2025/11/

https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2025/11/eng/in...

    Interpretation
    1. In this Act—
        “broadcast” has the meaning assigned to it by the Broadcasting Act 2009;
        “distribute” means distribute to the public or a section of the public;
        “harm” includes psychological harm;
        “Minister” means the Minister for Justice;
        “publish” means publish, other than by way of broadcast, to the public or to a portion of the public.

    Offences
    2. (1) A person who—
           (a) knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of and publishes, performs, distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to the public an individual’s name, photograph, voice, or likeness in any medium for purposes of advertising products, events, political activities, merchandise, goods, or services or for purposes of fundraising, solicitation of donations, purchases of products, merchandise, goods, or services or to influence elections or referenda, or
           (b) distributes, transmits, or otherwise makes available an algorithm, software, tool, or other technology, service, or device, the primary purpose or function of which is the production of an individual’s photograph, voice, or likeness, is guilty of an offence where these actions are carried out—
               (i) without the individual’s prior consent, or, in the case of a minor, the prior consent of such minor's parent or legal guardian, or in the case of a deceased individual, the consent of the executor or administrator, heirs, or devisees of such deceased individual,
               (ii) with intent to cause harm to, or being reckless as to whether or not harm is caused to, the other person.
        (2) For the purposes of subsection (1), a person causes harm to another person where—
            (a) he or she, by his or her acts, intentionally or recklessly seriously interferes with the other person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm or distress to the other person, and
            (b) his or her acts are such that a reasonable person would realise that the acts would seriously interfere with the other person’s peace and privacy or cause alarm or distress to the other person.
        (3) A person who is guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
            (a) on summary conviction to a class A fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months, or both, or
            (b) on conviction on indictment to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years, or both.

    Review and operation of Act
    3. The Minister shall, not later than one year after the commencement of this Act, carry out a review of the operation of this Act.

    Short title and commencement
    4. (1) This Act may be cited as the Protection of Voice and Image Act 2025.
       (2) This Act shall come into operation on such day or days as the Minister for Justice may by order or orders appoint either generally or with reference to any particular purpose or provision and different days may be so appointed for different purposes or different provisions.

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

who decides what is harmful? That's going to be like letting a Bible thumping Moral Majority zealot decide what's Art and what's pornography.

And under which jurisdiction is this going to be prosecuted? So some random Nazi on Twitter makes CSAM of an Irish actress - is Musk going to comply with the subpoena to help the Irish authorities find the user? He’s already said he won’t be punishing users for ‘free speech’ as he defines it.. so then what?

Note that the bill includes "distributes", so Twitter clearly counts as "distributor".

More interesting question: if the Twitter app is made available through the Apple App store, then would famous Irish-based multinational company Apple be liable as well?

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#53

> knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of and publishes ... an individual’s name, photograph ... without the individual’s prior consent ... and being reckless as to whether or not harm is caused to, the other person. > [harm occurs when someone] seriously interferes with the other person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm or distress to the other person This seems very widely worded. A newspaper publishing the n…

Your snipping is making it look broader than it is: you can’t misrepresent someone as being supportive of your product or cause, and you can’t distribute software that makes, or make yourself, likenesses of other people without their prior consent. It doesn’t constrain what you do in contexts other than where you use someone’s likeness to misrepresent their position. The harms are restricted to the scope above.

Your second sentence directly contradicts your first sentence, and the substance of your post is only two sentences.

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#54

> knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of and publishes ... an individual’s name, photograph ... without the individual’s prior consent ... and being reckless as to whether or not harm is caused to, the other person. > [harm occurs when someone] seriously interferes with the other person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm or distress to the other person This seems very widely worded. A newspaper publishing the n…

AFAICT this is the actual bill: https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2025/11/eng/in... Your selective quoting is extremely misleading. The first section about publishing a name/photograph only applies in the context of "for purposes of advertising products, events, political activities, merchandise, goods, or services or for purposes of fundraising, solicitation of donations, purchases of products, merchandi…

[deleted]

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#55

Sure, its a proposed law for citizens of this country. So, how's that going to work out with Indian, Pakistani, North Korean, or similar locations using voice spoofing? Thats right. None.

I imagine whoever publishes it to the jurisdiction would be liable

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#56

> knowingly uses or infringes upon the use of and publishes ... an individual’s name, photograph ... without the individual’s prior consent ... and being reckless as to whether or not harm is caused to, the other person. > [harm occurs when someone] seriously interferes with the other person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm or distress to the other person This seems very widely worded. A newspaper publishing the n…

AFAICT this is the actual bill: https://data.oireachtas.ie/ie/oireachtas/bill/2025/11/eng/in... Your selective quoting is extremely misleading. The first section about publishing a name/photograph only applies in the context of "for purposes of advertising products, events, political activities, merchandise, goods, or services or for purposes of fundraising, solicitation of donations, purchases of products, merchandi…

But the second paragraph doesn't have any of those specifics. It's just any algorithm (an actual ban on forbidden math), software, tool, technology, service, or device.

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#57
post #8

This is a good way to regulate this. Criminalize people who abuse AI tools to cause harm. Don't try to impose censorship or mass-surveillance on AI tools. I oppose all pornography, but censoring nudity from a model both compromises the model's quality (example: SD3) and stops legitimate artistic value. Though the framing on Grok is highly duplicitous. It is against the ToS, and it's about a few abusers among millions…

> This is a good way to regulate this. Criminalize people who abuse AI tools to cause harm.

In same way as is done so successfully with guns, speeding automobiles, etc?

These things are capable of inferring photorealistic av deepfakes; with a well drafted law they're more than capable of inferring if what they are being asked to is illegal.

It makes zero sense to wait for the poop to hit the fan and then waste taxes investigating the illegality, punishing criminals, and dealing with impact on victims when it can stopped at source.

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#58
post #43
post #27

"Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse" - now that's some strange capitalis/zation in that headline. I'm Ok with title case, but randomly capitalising just one word in a title looks strange. Or is this something specifically Irish?

I can't speak for Ireland, but in the UK it is quite common to refer to a Bill (before it has passed) or an Act (when it is passed) with a capital letter, rightly or wrongly, because its name would be capitalised (in this case The Protection of Voice and Image Bill, with Bill replaced by Act once it has become law). It is also a capitalised term within the text of the law itself.

It also helps that Bill is not a common name here at all (the only Bill I've ever met in my life was an American).

I can imagine how confusing it would be if all instances of the word Bill in articles such as these were replaced with Seán lol.

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#59

AI is a god send to governments who have been trying to push through censorship laws under the guise of "protecting [people|children|women|etc]"

Hot take that 99% of the world agrees with: Cyberbullying is bad and it's ok to punish cyberbullies.

Re: Ireland fast tracks Bill to criminalise harmful voice or image misuse

#60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existing fraud and advertising laws cover these kind of scams. Because the bottleneck is enforcement, adding new laws won't make the world safer.

This is only going to change if prosecution is brought against Meta itself, which it looks like the "recklessly" clause is intended to imply. I look forward to Meta facing criminal charges for profiting from fraud. What's the Irish equivalent of Hansard, by the way? Can we look up the debate?

> facing criminal charges for profiting from fraud

Amazon, too, but this seems to be "fraud that annoys pols," so I guess The Big A is going to be left alone...

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