Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has filed a lawsuit against Musk’s AI company, xAI, claiming its Grok chatbot enabled the creation of sexually exploitative deepfake images of her, causing humiliation and emotional distress, reports AP.
The 27-year-old writer and political strategist alleges in the New York City lawsuit filed Thursday that Grok generated images including a photo of her fully dressed at age 14 altered to appear in a bikini, as well as other images depicting her as an adult in sexualized poses and wearing bikinis with swastikas. St. Clair is Jewish. Grok operates on Musk’s social media platform X.
St. Clair reported the deepfakes to X after they began circulating last year, requesting their removal. She says the platform initially ruled the images did not violate its policies, later promising that her images would not be used or altered without her consent. She claims that X then retaliated by removing her premium subscription and verification checkmark, restricting her ability to monetize her account of 1 million followers, and continuing to allow degrading fake images.
“I have suffered and continue to suffer serious pain and mental distress as a result of xAI’s role in creating and distributing these digitally altered images of me,” St. Clair wrote in documents attached to the lawsuit. “I am humiliated and feel like this nightmare will never stop so long as Grok continues to generate these images of me.” She added that she lives in fear of the people who view the deepfakes.
The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages for emotional distress and other claims, as well as court orders immediately barring xAI from generating further deepfakes of St. Clair.
St. Clair, who lives in New York City, is the mother of Musk’s 16-month-old son, Romulus.
xAI lawyers responded by transferring the case to federal court in Manhattan on Thursday and also filed a countersuit against St. Clair in the Northern District of Texas. The countersuit alleges that St. Clair violated the xAI user agreement, which requires lawsuits against the company to be filed in federal court in Texas, and seeks an undisclosed monetary judgment.
Carrie Goldberg, St. Clair’s attorney, described the countersuit as a “jolting” move. “Ms. St. Clair will be vigorously defending her forum in New York,” Goldberg said. “But any jurisdiction will recognize the gravamen of her claims — that by manufacturing nonconsensual sexually explicit images of girls and women, xAI is a public nuisance and a not reasonably safe product.”
In response to the controversy, X announced Wednesday that Grok would no longer allow users to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing where illegal. The platform also said it would restrict image creation and editing to paid accounts to improve accountability and reiterated its zero-tolerance policy on child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content, promising immediate removal and reporting to law enforcement when necessary.
xAI did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. When asked about the lawsuit, the company replied in an email to The Associated Press: “Legacy Media Lies.”
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
