Children are being “bombarded” online by so-called AI girlfriend porn apps, which are “grooming” boys to perpetrate sexual violence and girls to accept such behaviour.
Irish children’s charities and pornography researchers say the only way to combat this growing problem is to “criminalise” porn company bosses.
The call comes as the British government announced it was banning AI girlfriend and ‘nudification’ apps and websites and after Australian research showed how some sites allow boys to digitally create scenes of women and underage girls being sexually tortured by men.
“These are not girlfriends, they are sex slaves that will do whatever you tell them,” said Eoghan Cleary, a researcher with the Sexual Exploitation Research and Policy Institute (SERP) at UCD, and Eoghan joined us on The Agenda this morning to talk to us some more about this.
We were also joined by CEO of CyberSafeKids, Alex Cooney, to get her thoughts on this.