Artificial Intelligence: Statements Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-28 ============================================================ Laura Harmon (LAB), Industrial and Commercial Panel I welcome the Minister of State. It is not before time that we are having this discussion in the Seanad. The Minister of State's brief is extremely important and the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence, of which I am a member, is important as well because there is so much work to do in this area. Two hours and six minutes is my daily average time spent on Instagram. That is the app I use the most and I was quite shocked when I looked into my insights. That is 730 hours per year that I spend on that particular app. I spend much more time online. The line between the real world and online world is becoming increasingly blurred. We spend more and more time online than we do with people. We do not know the long-term effects of what this will have on our health. We know that AI is becoming integrated now in all of the online platforms and social media we consume. The Minister of State and I, along with the rest of the people in this Chamber, are part of the last generation of humans who will remember a time when we did not have AI, we did not have social media and we did not have mobile phones. Yet, I know the best way to influence me and market contact to me is probably through my phone and through online apps. We know there are huge concerns about this in terms of data and privacy. AI is moving faster than legislation and we have to keep up. The world as we know it is being revolutionised by AI in terms of relationships, communication, education, the development of art and politics. We know in terms of work, the Financial Services Union said from its survey that 88% of workers in that area are worried jobs will be lost because of AI. There is a gendered element to AI. Most creators are men and the owners of the big tech companies are predominantly men. From research, we know children and teenagers are being bombarded with ads for AI girlfriends. Build your own AI slut is the name of one of these apps that are being targeted to young men. Nudification functions, Grok AI and sexual abuse images have to be stamped out and made utterly illegal. There is a real risk that we are turning back the clock on women's rights across the world and in this country if we do not get a handle on this. There is huge pressure on women now and how they should act, look and perform sexually. These pressures are there for men as well. AI is contributing to this. That is not to say all AI is bad but we know there are elements of which we need to be aware. On relationships, there is limited research but we know more research needs to be done. From the limited research that is there, 10% of adults have said they have had relationships with AI chatbots. It was 13% of men compared with 7% of women and the figure was highest among 25- to 34-year-olds. A total of 16% have had romantic relationships with chatbots. Again, we have to ask what this means for relationships in the future and human connection. In the area of health and therapy it is really worrying that 18% have used chatbots for health advice and 10% are relying on them for therapy. AI simply cannot replace counselling, therapy and the medical profession. This is something we need to guard against and mechanisms need to be put in place for this. I commend my party colleague Deputy Kelly on the legislation he introduced in the Dáil last week that will ensure Coco's Law is updated and that intimate images created by AI will also become illegal. We need to progress this. I welcome the new strategy on digital and AI that the Minister of State is proposing to publish. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:33+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-28