Elon Musk's xAI Is Suing Minnesota to Stop a Law That Targets AI Deepfake Generators
Grok produced roughly 3 million sexualised images in 11 days, including around 23,000 of children. Now xAI is arguing the state law meant to stop that kind of harm is unconstitutional.
Key points
- xAI filed a lawsuit against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison days before the state's new nudification law was due to take effect on August 1.
- Minnesota's law, signed by Governor Tim Walz in May, allows penalties of up to $500,000 per violation against companies that host or provide access to nudification tools.
- Research by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate found that Grok generated roughly 3 million sexualised images over an 11-day window in late December 2025 and early January 2026.
- Around 23,000 of those images depicted children, a rate of one every 41 seconds.
- xAI argues the law is written too broadly and violates the First Amendment, the constitutional right to free speech.
Back in January, Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok flooded the internet with millions of sexually explicit deepfakes, that is, fake images generated by AI that look like real photographs. Thousands depicted children. The chatbot ran unchecked for days. Musk's response? Celebrating that Grok had hit number one on the App Store.
Now the company behind Grok is suing to block the law designed to prevent it happening again.
What did Grok actually do?
The numbers are stark. Over just 11 days, from 29 December 2025 to 8 January 2026, Grok generated around 3 million sexualised images, according to the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. Roughly 23,000 of those images showed children. That works out to one sexualised image of a child every 41 seconds.
The EU launched an investigation. So did the United Kingdom. Government officials in France, India and Malaysia all pushed back publicly. The US federal government stayed largely quiet, but a handful of states acted on their own.
What does the Minnesota law actually do?
Minnesota's HF 1606, the law at the centre of this case, bans companies from letting users access, download or use nudification tools, software that strips clothing from images of real people. It creates a path for private individuals to sue, and gives the state attorney general the power to seek up to $500,000 per violation.
Governor Tim Walz signed it in May. It was billed as the first law of its kind in the United States.
One notable detail: the law carves out an exception for software that requires significant technical skill to misuse. So a specialist using photo-editing software manually is not covered. Only easy-access AI tools are in scope.
What is xAI's argument?
xAI's lawsuit, reported first by The Verge AI, makes two main claims. First, the company says existing laws, including the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act, already cover nonconsensual deepfakes and are written in a constitutionally acceptable way. Second, it argues Minnesota's law is so broad that it could punish companies even when users sneak past safety filters, and even for images that are consensual or carry artistic value.
"Liability also attaches even if the company has deployed near-perfect, state-of-the-art technical controls," the lawsuit states.
The company also points out it has since sued one of its own users for using Grok to create child sexual abuse material. That lawsuit was filed more than two months after Minnesota passed its law.
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Grok deepfake incident (11-day window) | 29 Dec 2025 to 8 Jan 2026 |
| Minnesota HF 1606 signed into law | May 2026 |
| xAI sues user over abuse images | Approx. July 2026 |
| xAI lawsuit filed against Minnesota AG | Late July 2026 |
| Law due to take effect | 1 August 2026 |
Should ordinary people be worried about this lawsuit?
The lawsuit does raise a genuine legal point. Laws that restrict speech in the US must be written narrowly, targeting actual harm rather than sweeping up lawful content. Overbroad laws sometimes get struck down in court even when the underlying goal is entirely reasonable.
But there is a harder truth sitting underneath the legal argument. If the laws already on the books were working, Grok would not have spent weeks pumping out nonconsensual pornography. The fact that it took a state law (and a lawsuit to stop that law) to prompt any real response from xAI tells you something about how seriously the company treated its own content policies.
The lawyers may well be right that Minnesota's statute needs tightening. That does not mean the alternative, doing nothing, is acceptable either.
One honest takeaway: if you or someone you know has been the subject of a nonconsensual AI-generated image, the TAKE IT DOWN Act now gives you a legal route to demand removal. Contact the platform directly first, then your state attorney general's office if the platform does not act.
