xAI sues user for exploiting AI tool to sexualise minors

Lawsuit accuses Terry Harwood of misusing xAI to bypass safeguards and nutrient explicit deepfakes involving minors

Elon Musk’s xAI has filed a suit against a South Carolina antheral who was arrested earlier this twelvemonth connected charges of sexually exploiting minors, alleging that helium misused the company’s AI instrumentality to make sexually explicit contented involving a child.

The lawsuit, filed successful a Texas national tribunal connected Tuesday, alleges that Terry Harwood knowingly violated the company’s presumption of work to make the material.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 4US user prices driblet successful June arsenic vigor costs tumble
• list 2 of 4New York imposes landmark one-year prohibition connected ample information centres
• list 3 of 4My Twitter, not X
• list 4 of 4How US-Iran escalation volition trial Iraq’s balancing act

“[The] Defendant opened aggregate xAI accounts utilizing mendacious identities. Despite expressly agreeing to abide by the xAI Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, Defendant designed misleading prompts to circumvent Grok’s built-in safeguards and past abused the instrumentality to person non-sexual photographs into sexually explicit images without the photograph subjects’ cognition oregon consent,” the 12-page ailment said.

The suit alleges that Harwood uploaded images of some adults and minors that were not intersexual successful quality and past tried to make alleged “deepfakes” that sexualised them.

“A reappraisal of Defendant’s xAI accounts further shows that connected galore occasions during the Relevant Period, Defendant submitted prompts to Grok to change specified images to sexualize the subjects of the images, which Grok responded to by refusing to travel the prompts connected the ground that specified worldly violated Grok’s contented moderation guardrails,” the ailment added.

“In response, Defendant repeatedly submitted further prompts, with alterations, successful an effort to circumvent Grok’s moderation efforts.”

xAI is besides seeking monetary damages, though the lawsuit did not specify a dollar amount, arsenic good arsenic a tribunal bid permanently banning Harwood from utilizing the platform, which has much than 2.6 cardinal users.

The suit is the archetypal brought by an AI institution against 1 of its users and comes amid aggravated scrutiny of xAI astir the satellite for allowing users to make this benignant of contented connected the level successful the archetypal place.

Grok has been nether the spotlight successful Washington, been successful the crosshairs of European regulators, and faced bans successful some Malaysia and Indonesia regarding sexually explicit contented that tin beryllium created connected the platform.

Earlier this year, Musk pushed back connected allegations that Grok produced AI-generated sexualised images of children, particularly nude images.

“I [am] not alert of immoderate bare underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero,” Musk said successful an X station successful January.

xAI’s ailment said that the institution “enforces its rules against violators done relationship suspensions, relationship terminations, and by reporting suspected kid intersexual maltreatment worldly to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.”

The ailment points retired that the level had suspended much than 52,000 accounts and made much than 73,000 complaints to the organisation, which resulted successful astir 250 arrests successful 2026 alone.