Featured Image Credit: X/StClairAshley/Anna Barclay/Getty Images
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, Elon Musk
Phoebe Tonks
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Social Media, Elon Musk
Ashley St. Clair, the mother of Elon Musk’s 14th child, is suing the tech mogul over claims his AI company, xAI, has allowed the generation of sexually explicit images via Grok.
St. Clair filed the lawsuit against the platform on Thursday (January 15) as she alleged that it 'generated and circulated sexual deepfake images of her' across social media platform X.
"Defendant xAI, a tech giant with every tool and advantage at its disposal, has chosen to wilfully turn a blind eye and even celebrate the sexual exploitation of women and children," the lawsuit reads, as per PEOPLE.
"xAI’s product Grok, a generative artificial intelligence ('AI') chatbot, uses AI to undress, humiliate, and sexually exploit victims – creating genuine looking, altered deepfake content of children," the lawsuit claims.
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As part of her complaint, St. Clair alleges that the generative AI technology created sexually explicit images of her as a child and adult, prompting her to immediately contact X and ask for their removal.
"Grok first promised Ms. St. Clair that it would refrain from manufacturing more images unclothing her," the lawsuit reads, however, this does not appear to be the case, as it alleges that Musk ‘retaliated against’ her complaint and demonetized her X account.
It also goes on to allege that Musk then directed Grok to generate ‘multitudes’ more images of her, including ‘unlawful images’ of an explicit nature.
"xAI is not a reasonably safe product and is a public nuisance," St. Clair's attorney, Carrie Goldberg, said in a statement. "Nobody has born the brunt more than Ashley St. Clair. Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing nonconsensual, abusive, and degrading images of her and publishing them on X."
Goldberg continued: "This harm flowed directly from deliberate design choices that enabled Grok to be used as a tool of harassment and humiliation. Companies should not be able to escape responsibility when the products they build predictably cause this kind of harm. We intend to hold Grok accountable and to help establish clear legal boundaries for the entire public’s benefit to prevent AI from being weaponized for abuse."
The row surrounding Grok’s ability generate explicit images has gained increasing traction in recent weeks, with countries including the UK threatening to ban X altogether if steps aren’t taken to ensure the safety of all users.
Initially, Musk responded to concerns by restricting Grok to paid subscribers only, however, this still meant that anyone who paid the monthly fee to use the service could still generate explicit images.
Speaking out about claims that Grok was generating inappropriate images, Musk said: "Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests.
"When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state."
Musk concluded: "There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately."
Following a further backlash, however, he agreed to remove the capability – albeit not globally and a further announcement on Thursday read: "We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing."
"We now geoblock the ability of all users to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X in those jurisdictions where it's illegal," said X.
With NSFW (not safe for work) settings enabled, Grok is permitted to allow ‘upper body nudity of imaginary adult humans (not real ones)’ consistent with the level of nudity that can be found in R-rated films, Musk wrote online on Wednesday (January 14).
"That is the de facto standard in America. This will vary in other regions according to the laws on a country by country basis," he said.
After contacting representatives of xAI for comment, UNILAD received a response which simply said: "Legacy Media Lies."