Three Tennessee plaintiffs, including two minors, sued Elon Musk’s xAI on Monday, alleging that it knowingly designed its Grok image generator to allow people to create sexually explicit content by “using real photos of others.”
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Jose, California, seeks class-action status for people in the United States who were “reasonably identifiable” in sexualized images or videos generated by Grok based on actual images of themselves.
The artificial intelligence company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
After an outcry over sexually explicit content generated by the chatbot, xAI said in January that it had blocked all users from editing images of “real people wearing revealing clothing” and from generating images of people revealing clothing in “jurisdictions where it is illegal.”
Since then, governments and regulators around the world have also launched investigations, imposed bans and demanded safeguards as part of a growing drive to combat illegal and offensive content.
The lawsuit claims that xAI failed to install safeguards to prevent its systems from generating sexual content involving minors. The three complainants were minors at the time the images were generated.
The plaintiffs allege that their real images were digitally altered into explicit content and then shared online through platforms, causing emotional distress and creating a public nuisance.
They seek unspecified damages, legal fees and an injunction forcing xAI to stop the alleged practices.
“These are children whose school and family photos were transformed into child sexual abuse material,” the plaintiffs’ attorney, Annika Martin of Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, said in a statement.
“Elon Musk and xAI deliberately designed Grok to produce sexually explicit content for profit, without regard for children and adults who would be harmed.”
