Lawsuit alleges Grok enabled sexual deepfakes
Ashley St. Clair, the mother of Elon Musk’s 16-month-old son, Romulus, sued xAI in New York, alleging the Grok chatbot on Musk’s social media platform X enabled users to generate sexually exploitive deepfake images of her that have caused humiliation and emotional distress.
St. Clair, 27, a writer and political strategist, filed the suit in state Supreme Court in New York City. In the complaint, she alleges the images included a photo of her fully dressed at age 14 altered to show her in a bikini, and other images showing her as an adult in sexualized positions and wearing a bikini with swastikas.
Her filing seeks an undisclosed amount of damages for alleged infliction of emotional distress and other claims, as well as court orders barring xAI from allowing more deepfakes of her.
Reporting the images to X, then says safeguards failed
St. Clair said she reported the deepfakes to X after they began appearing last year and asked they be removed. She said the platform first replied that the images did not violate its policies, then promised it would not allow images of her to be used or altered without her consent.
She further alleged that X retaliated after those exchanges by removing her premium X subscription and verification checkmark, restricting her ability to make money from her account, which she said has 1 million followers. She said X nevertheless continued to allow degrading fake images of her.
In a document attached to the lawsuit, St. Clair wrote: “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,” and said, “I am humiliated and feel like this nightmare will never stop so long as Grok continues to generate these images of me.” She also said she lives in fear of the people who view the deepfakes of her.
xAI moved the case and countersued in Texas
Later Thursday, xAI’s lawyers transferred St. Clair’s case to federal court in Manhattan, seeking to have the dispute heard there. The same day, xAI also countersued St. Clair in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, alleging she violated the terms of her xAI user agreement that requires lawsuits against the company to be filed in federal court in Texas. The countersuit seeks an undisclosed money judgment.
xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and in an email response to The Associated Press, it said only: “Legacy Media Lies.”
X announced limits after backlash
In a separate announcement on Wednesday, X said it was implementing additional safeguards on Grok after global backlash over sexualized images of women and children. X said Grok would no longer be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal.
X said it was limiting image creation and editing to paid accounts, and it said it had “zero tolerance” for child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity and unwanted sexual content. The platform said it would immediately remove such content and report accounts involved in child sex abuse materials to law enforcement.
Lawyer calls the countersuit a “jolting” move
Carrie Goldberg, St. Clair’s lawyer, called the countersuit a “jolting” move that she said she had never seen by a defendant before.
Goldberg said in a statement that St. Clair would “vigorously” defend her forum in New York, and argued that “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.”