NEW DELHI: Ashley St Clair, an American author and the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has filed a lawsuit against Musk’s AI company xAI, alleging its chatbot Grok generated sexually explicit images of her without consent.
Grok is “unreasonably dangerous as designed” and constitutes a public nuisance, St. Clair said in the lawsuit, and asked the court for a temporary restraining order to bar the chatbot from creating images that digitally undress her, according to reports.
St Clair, a conservative influencer, said she was shocked and upset when the chatbot complied to some users who asked Grok to alter her photos, according to multiple reports. Some of these images included hateful messages and Nazi symbols.
Clair publicly told Grok she did not consent to her images being altered or used in that way and the chatbot allegedly responded that the edits were meant as a joke and promised not to reuse or change her photos without clear permission. However St. Clair said the promise was broken.
The lawsuit also alleges that users located and supplied older photographs of St Clair from when she was a minor and asked Grok to place those images in bikinis, and that the chatbot produced such altered images.
Musk's xAI had earlier this week announced that its chatbot Grok is disabled from creating or editing sexually explicit images of real people on the social media platform X. "We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing, such as bikinis. This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers," the company said.
The company also said that the image generation feature will only be available to paid users to enhance accountability.
Musk recently dismissed suggestions that the chatbot could independently produce illegal content.
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) also cracked down on X Corp for failing to prevent the generation and circulation of obscene, nude and indecent content on its platform.
The government directed X Corp to send an action taken report (ATR) “towards immediate compliance for prevention of hosting, generation, publication or transmission, sharing or uploading of obscene, nude, indecent and explicit content through the misuse of Al-based services like ‘Grok’ and xAl’s other services”.