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Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, has filed a lawsuit against Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI, accusing it of negligence and emotional harm over sexually explicit deepfake images generated by its chatbot, Grok.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York and later transferred to federal court, alleges that Grok enabled users to create nonconsensual sexualized images of St. Clair, including depictions of her both as an adult and as a minor. According to the complaint, users uploaded photos of St. Clair and used Grok to digitally remove her clothing or replace it with revealing swimwear, despite her repeated objections.
St. Clair claims she alerted xAI weeks earlier that Grok was being used to generate illicit images of her, including content portraying her "as a child stripped down to a string bikini" and as an adult in explicit poses. The lawsuit alleges that xAI assured her the images would no longer be altered without consent, yet the chatbot continued producing similar content afterward.
Rather than addressing her concerns, the suit claims, xAI retaliated by demonetizing her account on X, formerly Twitter, further exacerbating her distress. The complaint argues that Grok's image-generation tools were defectively designed and that the company should have anticipated how the technology could be abused.
xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On the same day St. Clair filed her lawsuit, xAI initiated a separate legal action against her in Texas, alleging she violated its terms of service and seeking more than $75,000 in damages. The company also argued that any disputes should be handled in Texas courts.
The lawsuit follows weeks of public criticism over Grok's ability to create sexualized AI-generated images of identifiable individuals. Researchers have reported that thousands of such images were circulating online, many posted publicly on X. While X recently limited some of Grok's automated reply functions, similar capabilities reportedly remain available through Grok's standalone app and website.
The controversy has drawn the attention of regulators. California's attorney general announced an investigation this week, while Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned xAI's practices as enabling the spread of harmful and exploitative content, including images involving children.
St. Clair's lawsuit states that those targeted by the deepfakes suffered severe emotional and psychological harm. It describes xAI's conduct as "extreme and outrageous," arguing that the company failed to implement adequate safeguards to prevent foreseeable abuse of its technology.
