The mother of one of Elon Musk's children is suing his AI company, saying its Grok chatbot allowed users to generate sexually exploitive deepfake images of her that have caused her humiliation and emotional distress.
Ashley St Clair, 27, who describes herself as a writer and political strategist, alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday in New York City against xAI that the images have included a photo of her fully dressed at age 14 that was altered to show her in a bikini, and others showing her as an adult in sexualised positions and wearing a bikini with swastikas. St Clair is Jewish. Grok is on Musk's social media platform X.
Lawyers and media contacts for xAI did not immediately return emails seeking comment Friday. On Wednesday, following global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, X announced that Grok would no longer be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing, in places where that is illegal.
St Clair said she reported the deepfakes to X after they began appearing last year and asked that they be removed. She said the platform first replied that the images did not violate its policies. Then it promised to not allow images of her to be used or altered without her consent, she said.
St Clair said the social platform then retaliated against her by removing her premium X subscription and verification checkmark, not allowing her to make money from her account, which has 1 million followers, and continuing to allow degrading fake images of her.
“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,” she said in a document 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 also said she lives in fear of the people who view the deepfakes of her.
St Clair is the mother of Musk's 16-month-old son, Romulus. She lives in New York City, where she filed the lawsuit in state Supreme Court. She is seeking an undisclosed amount of damages for alleged infliction of emotional distress and other claims, as well as court orders immediately barring xAI from allowing more deepfakes of her.
Later Thursday, lawyers for xAI transferred the lawsuit to federal court in Manhattan, asking a judge to hear the case there. And the same day, xAI also countersued St Clair in federal court in the Northern District of Texas, alleging she violated the terms of her xAI user agreement that requires lawsuits against the company be filed in federal court in Texas. It is seeking an undisclosed money judgment against her.
X is based in Texas, where Musk owns a home and his electric automaker Tesla in headquartered in Austin.
Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer for St Clair, called the countersuit a “jolting” move that she had never seen by a defendant before.
“Ms St Clair will be vigorously defending her forum in New York,” Goldberg said in a statement. “But frankly, any jurisdiction will recognize the gravamen of Ms St Clair's claims — that by manufacturing non-consensual sexually explicit images of girls and women, xAI is a public nuisance and a not reasonably safe product.”
In its announcement on Wednesday, X said it was implementing other safeguards on Grok including limiting image creation and editing to paid accounts, which it said would improve accountability. It said it had zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity and unwanted sexual content, and it would immediately remove such content and report accounts involved in child sex abuse materials to law enforcement.