Baltimore sues Elon Musk's xAI over Grok sexual 'deepfakes'

The metropolis of Baltimore sued Elon Musk’s xAI connected Tuesday, claiming ‌its Grok chatbot illegally generates nonconsensual sexually explicit images, including ​of children.

Baltimore, with a colonisation of astir 568,000, is ⁠the largest metropolis to writer xAI implicit “deepfakes” attributed to Grok, its lawyers said.

Musk launched Grok successful 2023 and distributes it done his societal media level X, which ‌like xAI is present portion of his rocket and abstraction exploration institution SpaceX.

Neither SpaceX nor xAI instantly responded to ‌requests for comment.

The Maryland metropolis said successful a ailment filed ‌in ⁠Baltimore Circuit Court that xAI is violating its user extortion statute ⁠by promoting Grok arsenic a safe, general-purpose artificial quality adjunct for mundane people.

Baltimore said Grok has flooded X users with objectionable content, becoming 1 of the largest ​distributors of worldly depicting nonconsensual intersexual ‌activity and kid intersexual maltreatment contempt promising it bans specified contented and permits lone consensually produced big nudity.

The metropolis besides said X, formerly known arsenic Twitter, generated an estimated 3 cardinal realistic-looking sexualised ‌images, including much than 23,000 of children, implicit 11 days ​around the commencement of the year.

“We’re talking astir tech companies enabling the intersexual exploitation of children,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon ⁠Scott said successful a statement. “It’s a menace to privacy, dignity and nationalist safety, and those liable indispensable beryllium held accountable.”

Musk’s xAI faces regulatory probes successful respective countries successful the Americas, Europe, Asia and successful Australia implicit Grok.

In mid-January, xAI said it restricted representation editing successful Grok, and blocked users from generating images of radical successful revealing covering successful “jurisdictions wherever it’s illegal.” Musk said astatine the clip helium was “not alert of immoderate bare underage images generated ‌by Grok. Literally zero.”

The ailment includes a Grok-generated representation that Musk shared connected ​December 31, 2025, depicting the 54-year-old successful a bluish drawstring bikini. Baltimore called it a “public endorsement” of Grok’s quality to ⁠generate revealing edits of existent people.

The 3 cardinal estimation came from ⁠the Center for Countering Digital Hate, based connected a random illustration of 20,000 images that Grok generated.

Baltimore is seeking an ‌injunction requiring xAI to alteration Grok’s “exploitative” plan features, and wage unspecified fines.

Last month’s operation of SpaceX and xAI created the world’s astir invaluable ​private company, worthy astir $1.25 trillion astatine the time.