Ireland's Coco's Law comes into force criminalising non-consensual intimate image sharing

Ireland's Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2024, known as Coco's Law, came into force on 1 November 2024, criminalising the non-consensual distribution of intimate images including those created using artificial intelligence or deepfake technology. The legislation introduces criminal penalties of up to seven years imprisonment for distributing, threatening to distribute, or possessing with intent to distribute intimate images without consent, and specifically addresses the creation and sharing of AI-generated sexual imagery, with provisions covering images of both adults and children and creating a new offence of using technology to coerce or control another person.

The law criminalises distribution after the fact but does not intercept the coercive conversation in which a perpetrator manipulates a victim into sending an image, nor does it detect when AI-generated or deepfake material is being created or shared in real time. Detection systems that identify sextortion patterns as they unfold in direct messages can block the demand before the victim complies and flag AI-generated CSAM at the point of distribution: Guardii's sextortion and CSAM detection modules, including filters for AI-generated and deepfake abuse material, operate across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and other messaging platforms to surface coercion, escalation and image-based threats as they occur, enabling intervention before distribution and immediate escalation to law enforcement when the pattern indicates an active offence.