The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his company – alleging explicit images were generated of her by his Grok AI tool, including one in which she was underage.
Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court of the state of New York against xAI, alleging that Grok, which is used on the social media platform X, promised to stop generating explicit images but continued to do so.
She is seeking punitive and compensatory damages, claiming dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were created by Grok.
After two weeks of public outcry at the tool being used to create sexualised images of women and children, the company said on Wednesday it would “geoblock” the ability of users “to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X” in countries where it was illegal.
St Clair, 27, who is estranged from Musk, is a rightwing influencer, author and political commentator. She and Musk are the parents of a son born in 2024.
She is being represented by Carrie Goldberg, a victims’ rights lawyer who specialises in holding tech companies accountable and has previously represented women who were victims of sexual harassment and abuse.
Goldberg told the Guardian: “xAI is not a reasonably safe product and is a public nuisance. Nobody has born the brunt more than Ashley St Clair. Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing nonconsensual, abusive, and degrading images of her and publishing them on X.
“This harm flowed directly from deliberate design choices that enabled Grok to be used as a tool of harassment and humiliation. Companies should not be able to escape responsibility when the products they build predictably cause this kind of harm. We intend to hold Grok accountable and to help establish clear legal boundaries for the entire public’s benefit to prevent AI from being weaponised for abuse.”
The filing alleges the social media company “retaliated against her, demonetising her X account and generating multitudes more images of her, including unlawful images of her in sex positions, covered in semen, virtually nude, and images of her as a child naked”.
Images generated by Grok, according to the filing, include one of her as a 14-year-old stripped into a string bikini plus sexualised content of St Clair as an adult, including a request to “put the girl in a bikini made out of floss”.
Not only were the images de facto nonconsensual, the filing states, but “Grok and xAI also had explicit knowledge that St Clair was not consenting to the creation or dissemination of these images because of her requests for removal”.
Grok also responded to user requests to add tattoos on to St Clair’s body – including the words “Elon’s whore”, the filing said.
St Clair, who is Jewish, alleges Grok digitally dressed her in a bikini decorated with swastikas.
The lawsuit states that X “financially benefited from the creation and dissemination of nonconsensual, realistic, sexualised deepfake content depicting Plaintiff as a minor and adult”.
The filing states that “xAI is directly liable for the harassment and explicit images created by its own chatbot, Grok”.
Musk has posted on X that the users of his app are responsible for the images they create. He said recently: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
He added: “Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests.”
X said on Thursday it had “zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content”.
The company has filed a countersuit claiming that according to the terms of service of X, St Clair cannot sue the company in New York but has to do so in Texas.
St Clair previously told the Guardian that she felt “horrified and violated”, adding: “It’s another tool of harassment. Consent is the whole issue.”
Acolytes of Musk had disliked her since she went public about his desire to build a “legion” of children, she said. Musk is the father of 13 other children, with three other women.
X has been contacted for comment.
