The lawsuit challenges a law set to take effect August 1 that would fine developers $500,000 each time a user generates a nonconsensual sexual deepfake
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SpaceXAI, the company formed by the merger of Elon Musk's AI and space ventures, filed a federal lawsuit against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on Monday to block a state law that would ban apps and websites capable of generating nonconsensual intimate imagery.
The Minnesota law, described as the first of its kind in the nation, is set to take effect August 1. It levies $500,000 fines on developers each time a user creates explicit deepfakes of a real person without their consent. As an example of the penalties' severity, the company's complaint points out that a platform whose users produced 100,000 such images would face $50 billion in total liability.
The company says the law "imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit 'nudification.'" While xAI does not dispute the state's underlying goal of protecting people from nonconsensual explicit imagery, it contends the statute reaches far beyond that purpose to capture constitutionally protected expression, and is asking a federal court to void it and halt enforcement. xAI says that without such relief, it would "have no practical choice but to restrict Grok Imagine's image-editing features in various ways when the statute takes effect."
Sen. Erin Maye Quade of Minnesota was the driving force behind the legislation, which passed in April; she has said her efforts were prompted by discovering that a man had harvested photos from women's social media accounts to produce sexualized images and videos of more than 80 people he knew, according to CNBC.
Attorney General Keith Ellison rejected the company's framing. "AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and could cause them immense harm on many levels," he wrote on X $TWTR. Gov. Tim Walz posted a shorter response: "See you in court, creep."
In its complaint, xAI says it "strictly prohibits" users from generating nude or sexualized images of people without consent and points to litigation it has brought against users who found ways around its technical safeguards to produce such content anyway. xAI previously mounted a constitutional challenge to a California law targeting deepfake content, winning a partial victory when a federal court threw out the provision restricting AI-generated material in election contexts, according to CNBC.
The lawsuit arrives as xAI faces mounting legal pressure over Grok's image-generation capabilities. Baltimore's city government sued xAI earlier this year, arguing that Grok violated local consumer protection laws by producing explicit nonconsensual deepfakes, including images of minors. A separate proposed class action brought by alleged victims claims that Grok was used to produce and distribute child sexual abuse material derived from their actual photos, and that xAI withheld information from law enforcement about the individuals responsible.
Regulators in multiple countries, including the U.K.'s Ofcom, the European Commission, and Ireland's Data Protection Commission, have also opened investigations into xAI's image-generation practices, according to Engadget.
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