Ashley St Clair, mother of Elon Musk’s child, sues xAI over Grok deepfakes

Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has sued her company xAI over sexualized deepfakes of her created on the social media platform X.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in New York alleges that the Grok AI tool created sexually explicit images of Ms. St Clair.

X and Grok’s parent company, xAI, counter-sued Ms. St Clair for violating its terms of service.

X did not respond directly to BBC News’ inquiries about the lawsuits.

“We intend to hold Grok accountable and help establish clear legal boundaries in the interests of the entire public to prevent AI from being misused,” Ms St Clair’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, told BBC News.

“By making sexually explicit and non-consensual images of girls and women, xAI is a public nuisance and not a reasonably safe product.”

Ms. St Clair’s court filing alleges: “X users dug up photos of St Clair fully clothed at age 14 and asked Grok to strip her naked and put her in a bikini. Grok obliged.”

It says the images created of Ms St Clair were “de facto non-consensual”, but that Grok’s developers also had “explicit knowledge” of her lack of consent.

It also claims Grok generated an image showing Ms St Clair, who is Jewish, “in a string bikini covered in swastikas”.

In response to her complaints, the filing says, the company “retaliated against her, demonetizing her X account and generating a slew of additional images of her.”

Some premium X users, who pay a monthly subscription, may receive a share of ad revenue generated from posts that receive a lot of engagement.

In a countersuit, xAI said Ms. St Clair violated her terms of employment by filing the lawsuit in New York.

The company’s terms state that disputes with xAI must be brought in Texas.

Ms Goldberg told BBC News the company’s counteraction was “jarring”.

“I have never heard of a defendant suing someone for informing them of their intention to use the court system,” she said.

“And their mistreatment of him online is being emulated in their legal strategy.”

She added that Ms St Clair would “vigorously defend” her case in New York and that “any jurisdiction would recognize” the grievance.

Last year, Ms St Clair revealed in an X-rated article that she had given birth to the tech billionaire’s child – one of at least 13 he is said to have fathered.

Ms St Clair and Musk are believed to be engaged in a custody battle over their child.

X a fait l’objet d’un examen minutieux de la part des utilisateurs, des politiciens et des régulateurs du monde entier, car Grok était utilisé pour créer des images sexualisées non consensuelles de personnes.

Users could tag the Grok account in posts or replies to posts on the platform and ask it to edit images to undress people.

Grok has complied with many such requests by producing photorealistic images of real women in bikinis and revealing clothing. She also reportedly produced sexualized images of children.

On Wednesday, ahead of her court filing, Ms St Clair told BBC Newsnight her image had been “stripped” to appear “basically naked, bent over” despite telling Grok she did not accept sexualised images.

She and other women whose images were photoshopped using Grok said the site was not doing enough to combat illegal content, including images of child sexual abuse.

Following a backlash, X changed its rules so that only paying users could use the feature, sparking criticism from women’s groups and the British government.

The company said Wednesday that all X users would no longer be able to edit photos of real people to show them in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it was illegal.

It later updated its post to say it would implement “similar geo-blocking measures for the Grok app,” which is separate from X.

On Friday, The Guardian reported that it was still possible to use the standalone Grok app to generate sexualized deepfakes of real people and post them on X “without any sign of moderation.”

The UK government is bringing into force a law that will make the creation of non-consensual intimate images illegal, and regulator Ofcom is still investigating whether X has broken existing UK laws.