Teenagers sue Musk’s xAI claiming image-generator made sexually explicit images of them as minors

Teenagers sue Musk's xAI, alleging its image-generator created explicit images of them as minors, sparking concerns over AI safety.

Three teenagers in Tennessee sued Elon Musk's xAI this week, claiming the company's image-generation tools were used to morph real photos of them into explicitly sexual images.

The high school students, who are seeking to proceed under pseudonyms, filed the lawsuit in California, where xAI — Musk's artificial intelligence company — has its headquarters. They are seeking class-action status in order to represent what the lawsuit says are thousands of victims like themselves who either are minors or were minors when sexually explicit images of them were created.

According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe 1 was alerted anonymously in December that someone was distributing sexually explicit images of her on a social media website.

“At least five of these files, one video and four images, depicted her actual face and body in settings with which she was familiar, but morphed into sexually explicit poses," the lawsuit states. It claims the person distributing the images knew Doe and used xAI's image generation tools to turn real photos of her into sexually abusive ones. One of the images was taken from a homecoming photo. Another was taken from a high school yearbook.

The person distributing the images also created explicit images of at least 18 other girls, two of whom are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit. In late December, local police arrested the perpetrator and confiscated his phone. They found that he had uploaded the images to several platforms where he traded them for sexually explicit images of other minors.

Other AI companies have prohibited their image-generators from producing any sexually explicit content, even of adults. Mr. Musk saw this as a business opportunity and promoted the ability of xAI's Grok chatbot to create “spicy” content, the lawsuit claims. However, there is currently no way to prevent the generation of explicit images of adults while completely blocking the generation of images of children, the lawsuit claims. It also claims that xAI knew Grok would be able to produce sexually explicit images of children but released it anyway.