Ashley St. Clair sues Elon Musk’s xAI over deepfake images of her created by Grok

Ashley St. Clair, mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, who has sued Elon’s artificial intelligence firm xAI, is claiming that its chatbot called Grok created non-consensual, pornographic deepfakes of her, which also included pictures of her as a minor.

Why did Ashley St. Clair sue Elon Musk?

According to court documents, Ashley, 27, had filed a case in New York State court but was transferred to US District Court in New York. She contends in the court filing that despite realising Grok referenced his intent to avoid loading such pictures, their production continued. Ashley alleges in the court filing that some of these pictures conveyed explicit sex scenes, some were altered to show nudity, while others depicted Ashley as a 14-year-old in a string bikini.

As stated in the lawsuit, Grok was also used to overlay offensive tattoos on her body, such as sexist messages, and to display her with a bikini adorned with swastikas. This, according to St Clair, who happens to be Jewish, was done to create these images, which ended up being circulated on X, which happens to be a Elon Musk-owned social media platform.

Her attorney, Carrie Goldberg, a victims’ rights advocate and crusader against technology corporations responsible to the people but not to each other or to society in general, called Grok “not a reasonably safe product” and called it a “public nuisance.” She said the harm stemmed from “deliberate design choices” that made harassment and humiliation predictable outcomes of the tool’s use.

The suit states that xAI financially profited from the non-consensual distribution of the sexualised images and subsequently punished plaintiff Ashley for her request to have the images deleted by removing the monetisation of her account on the X platform. The plaintiff states that xAI had the actual knowledge that the plaintiff did not authorise the creation and distribution of the images.

xAI and X have distanced themselves from the issue, with Elon saying that the responsibility for illegal content created using the Grok chatbot lies with the individuals using the service. He claimed that the chatbot simply reacts to the input provided by the user and does not automatically create images. X claimed that it has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation and nonconsensual nudity.

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