Elon Musk's xAI sues Minnesota over its first-in-the-nation law banning
'nudification' technology
[July 30, 2026] By
MARC LEVY and BARBARA ORTUTAY
Elon Musk's company xAI has sued Minnesota over the state's
first-in-the-nation law that bans “nudification” technology on websites
and apps, potentially providing a test for how far states can go in
constitutionally regulating the use of artificial intelligence.
Musk's company sued Monday in federal court, days before the law is set
to take effect Saturday and make Minnesota the first state to try to
outlaw the increasingly proliferating technology that lets people use AI
to to create fake nude images of real people. The law was signed in May.
In the 38-page lawsuit, xAI — whose AI model chatbot and image generator
Grok is available on the social media platform known as X, formerly
Twitter, and elsewhere — said it does not contest the state's interest
in banning the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people
without their consent. But it said Minnesota's law “extends far beyond
that goal,” banning many constitutionally protected images and video and
subjecting the company to a penalty of $500,000 per violation.
The lawsuit argues there is no “safe harbor” provision for companies
that make good-faith efforts to prevent such images from being created
by users, and that it covers images that were consented to by the
depicted person, or even created by that person.
It also says the law’s definition of “intimate part” is overly broad,
covering body parts that are routinely displayed in public.
In a statement, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said his office
had not been served with the lawsuit yet or seen it.
“But I know that using AI to generate nude images of people against
their will is appalling. There are plenty of worthy debates to have
about AI policy. This is not one of them. AI nudification robs the
target of their dignity and can cause immense harm on an emotional,
personal, and professional level,” Ellison said.
State laws over election deepfakes have had mixed results in courts.
California's law was blocked over First Amendment speech protections.
Minnesota's law has thus far survived a 2025 court challenge by Musk's
company.
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 The law is distinct from state and
federal laws that outlaw deepfakes, AI-generated sexually explicit
images of people without their consent. Those laws typically
penalize the people who use the tools to make these images, not the
makers of the tools themselves. The federal Take it Down Act, passed
last year, also requires websites and apps to implement a process to
remove those images.
Texas last year took on nudification in a slightly different way. It
made a website or app owner liable to civil damages from a person
depicted in a nudified image — and potentially criminal penalties —
if the website or app owner knew the person hadn't given consent to
its creation or fails to take it down promptly when told about it.
In the lawsuit, xAI said the terms of service for using Grok
prohibit using it for “any illegal, harmful, or abusive activities"
that violate someone's privacy, including altering their image to
nudify them or depict them in a sexually explicit image. It said it
enforces those rules against violators through account suspensions
or terminations, and by reporting suspected child sexual abuse
content.
XAI also said earlier this year that it has “zero tolerance for any
forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and
unwanted sexual content.”
After a global backlash over sexualized images of women and
children, Grok said in January it will geoblock content if it
violates laws in a particular place, preventing people from editing
photos of real people in revealing clothing in places where that is
illegal. Grok’s “spicy mode” had allowed users to create explicit
content, leading to a backlash from governments worldwide.
“We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok
account from allowing the editing of images of real people in
revealing clothing such as bikinis, underwear and other revealing
attire,” xAI said in a January statement.
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