Ashley St. Clair, the mother of Elon Musk’s son Romulus, sued his xAI company, alleging its Grok generative tool created explicit sexual images of her without her consent.
St. Clair, 27, filed the lawsuit in New York on Thursday, January 15, according to CNN, NBC News and People.
In the filing, the right-wing political commentator alleged that “xAI’s product Grok, a generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) chatbot, uses AI to undress, humiliate and sexually exploit victims.”
St. Clair claimed that X users were able to use Grok to generate “countless sexually abusive, intimate and degrading deepfake content” of her despite informing Grok that she “did not consent to being undressed.”
The lawsuit alleged, “Among other things, X users dug up photos of St. Clair fully clothed at 14 years old and requested Grok undress her and put her in a bikini. Grok obliged.”
“Grok also produced deepfake, sexualized content of St. Clair as an adult, including deepfake content of her covered in semen [and] her rubbing her breasts,” the lawsuit continued, adding that images were also altered to add tattoos to St. Clair’s likeness such as “Elon’s w****” and make her look “morbidly obese.”
St. Clair’s legal team argued that “xAI is directly liable for the harassment and explicit images created by its own chatbot, Grok,” and demanded a trial by jury.
Us Weekly has reached out to xAI for comment.
“xAI is not a reasonably safe product and is a public nuisance,” St. Clair’s attorney, Carrie Goldberg, said in a statement to People on Thursday. “Nobody has born the brunt more than Ashley St. Clair. Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing nonconsensual, abusive and degrading images of her and publishing them on X.”
Goldberg added, “This harm flowed directly from deliberate design choices that enabled Grok to be used as a tool of harassment and humiliation. Companies should not be able to escape responsibility when the products they build predictably cause this kind of harm. We intend to hold Grok accountable and to help establish clear legal boundaries for the entire public’s benefit to prevent AI from being weaponized for abuse.”
On Wednesday, January 14, X said it had “implemented technological measures to prevent the [@]Grok account on X globally from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” after the platform was inundated with user requests to alter photos of real people.
“We remain committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content,” X added.
In a January 9 interview with Inside Edition, St. Clair said she felt “disgusted and violated” by the images that were allegedly generated by Grok.
“I got a text from a friend, right after I put my son to sleep, so I was like, ‘Oh my God, what could this be now?’ And I found that Grok was undressing me and it had taken a fully clothed photo of me. Someone asked it to put me in a bikini and it did,” she said. “These are real images of me that they then took and had them undress me. So, they found a photo of me when I was 14 years old and had Grok undress 14-year-old me and put me in a bikini.”
St. Clair and Musk, 54, are currently locked in a dispute over custody of their 16-month-old son after the political strategist publicly expressed support for transgender rights.
“I will be filing for full custody today, given her statements implying she might transition a one-year-old boy,” Musk, who has at least 13 other children, wrote in an X post on Monday, January 12.
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