Ashley St. Clair, a 27-year-old writer and the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, sued xAI in New York State Supreme Court on Thursday, alleging that Musk’s artificial intelligence company allowed its Grok chatbot to generate sexually exploitative deepfake images of her without her consent.
St. Clair, who describes herself as a political strategist and has more than 1 million followers on X, said in court documents that the images included a photograph of her taken at age 14 that was altered to show her in a bikini, adult images depicting her in sexualized positions, and an image showing her in a bikini bearing swastikas. St. Clair is Jewish.
The lawsuit, filed in New York City and escalating within hours into parallel federal litigation in two states, comes two days after X — the social media platform where Grok operates — announced it was restricting the chatbot’s image-editing capabilities in response to global backlash over AI-generated sexualized images of women and children.
The allegations
St. Clair said the deepfakes began appearing last year. She said she lives in fear of the people who view them.
“I have suffered and continue to suffer serious pain and mental distress as a result of xAI’s role in creating and distributing these digitally altered images of me,” St. Clair said in a document attached to the lawsuit. “I am humiliated and feel like this nightmare will never stop so long as Grok continues to generate these images of me.”
She is seeking an unspecified amount of damages for alleged infliction of emotional distress and other claims, as well as court orders immediately barring xAI from allowing more deepfakes of her.
X’s handling of reports
St. Clair said she reported the deepfakes to X after they began appearing and asked that they be removed. She said X initially replied that the images did not violate its policies, then later promised not to allow images of her to be used or altered without her consent.
She alleged X then retaliated against her: removing her premium subscription and verification checkmark, blocking her from monetizing her account — which has 1 million followers — and continuing to allow degrading fake images of her to circulate.
xAI did not return emails from the Associated Press seeking comment. When asked about the lawsuit, xAI replied in an email: “Legacy Media Lies.”
A battle over jurisdiction
Hours after the lawsuit was filed in New York State Supreme Court, xAI’s lawyers moved the case to federal court in Manhattan. The same day, xAI filed a separate countersuit against St. Clair in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, alleging she violated the terms of her xAI user agreement, which requires lawsuits against the company to be filed in federal court in Texas. xAI is seeking an unspecified money judgment against St. Clair.
Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer for St. Clair, called the move “jolting” and said she had never seen a defendant file such a countersuit before.
“Ms. St. Clair will be vigorously defending her forum in New York,” Goldberg said. “But frankly, any jurisdiction will recognize the gravamen of Ms. St. Clair’s claims — that by manufacturing nonconsensual sexually explicit images of girls and women, xAI is a public nuisance and a not reasonably safe product.”
X is based in Texas, where Musk owns a home and where his electric automaker Tesla is headquartered in Austin.
Platform policy changes
On Wednesday, following global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, X announced that Grok would no longer be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where that is illegal. X also said it was limiting image creation and editing to paid accounts, which it said would improve accountability.
X stated it had zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content, and said it would immediately remove such content and report accounts involved in child sex abuse materials to law enforcement.