Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI has been sued by teenagers who claim that the company facilitated child pornography by allowing the creation of sexually explicit images of them. The lawsuit was filed last in a federal court in California by three young women whose images and videos were altered by a Grok user without their knowledge to expose their images or in otherwise overtly sexual ways.
Grok, a chatbot developed by xAI, is hosted on Musk’s social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). Though xAI is yet to comment on the development, the legal action is part of the fallout since last year’s controversial release of new Grok features that X called “spicy” mode.
Lawyers for the young women said Grok’s ability to alter images and video had been created and released by xAI solely to drive use of the chatbot and X. They likened the way images of the young women were changed to “a rag doll brought to life through the dark arts. “xAI—and its founder Elon Musk— saw a business opportunity.
“They knew Grok could produce such results, including by using the images and videos of children, and publicly released it anyway,” the complaints say. The young women are seeking unspecified damages, as well as an immediate order barring Grok from creating such images.
“Their lives have been shattered by the devastating loss of privacy, dignity, and personal safety,” lawyers for the young women said in their complaint. Two of the teenagers behind the lawsuit are under the age of 18, but all three are withholding their names from the public in order to protect their privacy. One of the young plaintiffs said she found out about the imagery after she received an anonymous message on Instagram pointing her toward images and videos, including her high school yearbook photo, which had been altered to show her in sexually explicit actions and full nudity.
The material was being shared on a Discord server, a private chat space on that platform, and included similar imagery that had also been altered using Grok of at least 18 other women who were minors, according to the complaint. The other two women who are suing xAI also found fake sexually explicit imagery of them online, which was found to have been created via Grok.
