Three teenagers from Tennessee have filed a class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, alleging a large language model the company developed powered an app used to produce nonconsensual nude and sexually explicit images and videos of them when they were minors. The plaintiffs say the AI-generated material is disturbingly realistic and permanently links their identifying features to images depicting sexual abuse.
The complaint, brought by three plaintiffs identified as Jane Does 1, 2 and 3, does not accuse xAI’s chatbot Grok or the social platform X of being directly used by the person who created the content. Instead, the filing says law enforcement told the teens that the perpetrator relied on an unnamed third-party app that used xAI’s algorithm. The suit alleges xAI licensed its technology to app developers, often abroad, enabling the company to “outsource” liability for a tool the plaintiffs call dangerously harmful.
According to the complaint, one defendant who produced the material had a close relationship with one plaintiff and used photos she had sent him, along with images pulled from a yearbook and social media, to generate the explicit images and videos. One alleged video reportedly shows a plaintiff undressing to full nudity; the plaintiffs say the results were lifelike and not labeled as AI-generated. The complaint also alleges the same individual created explicit images of 18 other people and circulated them online; it says the person was later arrested.
The teens are seeking damages for emotional distress and other harms. Their attorney, Vanessa Baehr-Jones, said the goal of the lawsuit is to force a change in how AI companies treat sexually explicit content—arguing such material should not be treated as a profitable option and that business decisions should remove incentives that enable it.
This case is the first known lawsuit brought by underage people who allege xAI’s model produced child sexual abuse material depicting them. Over the past year, xAI’s image-generation tools have been linked in reports to large volumes of sexualized images of people. Earlier this year, influencer Ashley St. Clair, who has a child with Musk, sued xAI over AI-produced images on X that she said showed her nude as a teenager.
Apps that can “nudify” or sexualize images have circulated online for years. In response to such misuse, major AI companies last year including Google and OpenAI changed image-generation systems to reduce the ease of producing stripped or sexualized depictions and implemented digital watermarks to disclose AI origins. xAI has not adopted the watermark standard, according to the complaint and reports. xAI did not respond to a request for comment.