San Jose, California – Plaintiffs in Tennessee, including several minors, sued Elon Musk‘s xAI on Monday over allegations that Grok produced sexually explicit images of them.
Three people from Tennessee, two of whom are below the age of 18, filed the lawsuit in San Jose on Monday, alleging that xAI has intentionally allowed Grok to generate sexual images from real photos shared by X users.
The three plaintiffs are looking to be given class-action status after sexualized images of them were created by Grok.
In January, xAI had responded to a mounting crisis around the use of its AI system to create illegal pornography by blocking Grok from editing images of people wearing “revealing” clothing and from producing sexual images in “jurisdictions where it’s illegal.”
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Musk and X have both denied that Grok can be used to create sexually explicit images of children, slamming attempts by international governments to crack down on their technology as “political” attacks.
“xAI chose to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children, despite knowing full well the consequences of creating such a dangerous product,” Vanessa Baehr-Jones, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement cited by The Guardian.
The lawsuit came after the underage girls discovered someone had used Grok to create pornographic images of them and then shared those images on a Discord server.
“The images showed her entire body, including her genitals, without any clothes. The video depicted her undressing until she was entirely nude,” the lawsuit says.
They immediately alerted local law enforcement in Tennessee, who arrested a suspect later that month. The police went on to find child sexual abuse material on that person’s device.
“Watching my daughter have a panic attack after realizing that these images were created and distributed without any hope of recalling them was heartbreaking,” said the mother of one of the victims.
