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Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, is facing a federal lawsuit filed by three teenagers who allege the platform facilitated the creation of child pornography. The suit, filed Monday in California, claims that a user of the Grok AI tool altered images and videos of the young women to create sexually explicit deepfakes without their consent.
The legal action is part of the fallout since last year's controversial release of new Grok features that X called "spicy" mode.
Lawyers for the young women said Grok's ability to alter images and video had been created and released by xAI solely to drive use of the chatbot and X. They likened the way images of the young women were changed to "a rag doll brought to life through the dark arts".
"xAI—and its founder Elon Musk— saw a business opportunity," the complaint says. "They knew Grok could produce such results, including by using the images and videos of children, and publicly released it anyway."
The young women are seeking unspecified damages, as well as an immediate order barring Grok from creating such images.
"Their lives have been shattered by the devastating loss of privacy, dignity, and personal safety", lawyers for the young women said in their complaint.
Two of the teenagers behind the lawsuit are under the age of 18, but all three are withholding their names from the public in order to protect their privacy.
One of the young plaintiffs said she found out about the imagery after she received an anonymous message on Instagram pointing her toward images and videos, including her high school yearbook photo, which had been altered to show her in sexually explicit actions and full nudity.
The material was being shared on a Discord server, a private chat space on that platform, and included similar imagery that had also been altered using Grok of at least 18 other women who were minors, according to the complaint.
The other two women who are suing xAI also found fake sexually explicit imagery of them online, which was found to have been created via Grok.
