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Law / Ireland

Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, Intimate Image Offences

Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020 (No. 32 of 2020), ss. 1-3

In force since .

An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.

Obligation class
Prohibition, Consent
Audit expectation
none
Setting the rule reaches
General

What it requires

  • Do not distribute, publish or threaten to distribute or publish an intimate image of another person without that person's consent, with intent to cause harm or being reckless as to whether harm is caused, including an image that only purports to be that person's intimate depiction, such as an AI-generated or digitally altered synthetic image (s. 2).
  • Do not record, distribute or publish an intimate image of another person without that person's consent where doing so seriously interferes with that person's peace and privacy or causes alarm, distress or harm (s. 3).

These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.

In the frameworks

NIST AI RMF
  • MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
NIST AI 600-1
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 1.5Safety Decision Frameworks
  • 3.3Access Management
FINOS AIGF
ETSI EN 304 223
  • 5.1.2-1Business need and security risks written down and assessed before deciding to build an AI system.
  • 5.1.4-5End-users told which uses of the system are prohibited.

Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law

Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.

If you get it wrong

Criminal exposureYes

Private right of actionNo

Criminal exposure note

Section 2: on summary conviction, a class A fine or imprisonment up to 12 months, or both; on conviction on indictment, a fine or imprisonment up to seven years, or both. Section 3: summary conviction only, a class A fine or imprisonment up to 12 months, or both.

Who enforces it

Settledness

As of
Open questions
  • Does 'of what is, or purports to be the person's genitals, buttocks or anal region' in the definition of 'intimate image' in section 1 reach a synthetic image in which a real person's face is placed on a body that does not purport to be hers?
  • Does 'distributes' in section 2(1) reach a service that generates an intimate image of a real person at a user's request and returns it to that user alone?

What it makes you log

Logging duty

Sections 2 and 3 are criminal prohibitions on distributing, publishing, threatening to distribute or publish, or recording an intimate image without consent. Neither section states a duty to create, keep or produce a log or record of any kind.

Kind
None
As of

What this law does

Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

Research summary

Legal information, not legal advice. This is LexLint's own research summary of a public legal source, and it creates no attorney-client relationship. For decisions that matter, consult qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. About LexLint

Section 2 makes it an offence to distribute, publish or threaten to distribute or publish an intimate image of another person without that person's consent, with intent to cause harm or being reckless as to whether harm is caused. Section 3 separately makes it an offence to record, distribute or publish an intimate image of another person without consent where that act seriously interferes with the other person's peace and privacy or causes alarm, distress or harm.

The Act's definition of 'intimate image' covers any visual representation, made by any means including a photographic, film, video or digital representation, of what is, or purports to be, the person's genitals, buttocks, anal region, or, for a woman, her breasts, of underwear covering those areas, of a nude person, or of a person engaged in sexual activity.

Because the image need only purport to be the person's intimate depiction and may be made by any digital means, the offence reaches a fabricated or digitally altered image of that kind, including an AI-generated or AI-altered synthetic image, and is not limited to a genuine photograph of the person.

When LexLint raises it

When your app profile says your app generates images with AI, generates video with AI or publishes adult content.

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