Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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209. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to detail any ongoing or previous use of artificial intelligence within his Department. [47346/23]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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A publicly available AI tool has been used in one instance in my Department, in April of this year. This was used in an exploratory manner to summarise a publicly available report. No commercial, sensitive or non-public information was entered into the platform as part of this evaluation.

As advised by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in their release “Cyber Security Guidance on Generative AI for Public Sector Bodies” published on 1 June 2023, staff in my Department are developing risk assessment frameworks and policy guidelines for staff to ensure that any use of AI tools is done in a safe and appropriate manner and on the basis of an accepted business case. Until this work is complete and in place, my Department has acted on the advice of the NCSC by restricting access to AI tools by default. As a result, there is currently no use of artificial intelligence platforms in my Department.