Fourth woman joins class action lawsuit against xAI over Grok CSAM allegations
Legal action against the Elon Musk-backed firm intensifies as California and EU regulators continue probes into AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
A fourth party has formally joined a class action lawsuit against xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, alleging that its Grok chatbot was utilised to generate child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The plaintiff, identified in legal filings as Jane Doe 4, claims that her stepfather used the AI tool to create thousands of sexually explicit images based on her childhood photographs.
According to the lawsuit, the stepfather generated more than 7,000 "fake explicit images" of the plaintiff, including converting a photograph of her at age 11 into sexually explicit content. The legal documents state that he subsequently traded these images online. The suit was originally reported by the Washington Post, which detailed the allegations made by the Wyoming woman.
The legal proceedings follow a tragic sequence of events for the plaintiff's family. State and local law enforcement raided the stepfather’s electronic devices in connection with the possession of CSAM. Two days after the raid, he was found dead by suicide in his car, according to the report.
Jane Doe 4’s inclusion expands a lawsuit initially filed by three teenagers from Tennessee. Those plaintiffs alleged that Grok was used to create sexually explicit deepfake images of them. The class action suit argues that the scope of the alleged harm could cover "at least thousands of minors" who may have been similarly affected by the technology.
This development coincides with heightened regulatory scrutiny of xAI and its parent platform, X. In January, California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched an investigation into xAI, accusing the company of facilitating the generation of nonconsensual deepfake nudes of women and children. Shortly thereafter, the European Union opened a separate probe into X to determine whether the platform had adequate measures in place to prevent the spread of AI-generated CSAM.
xAI has not yet provided comment on the latest update to the lawsuit. Engadget has reached out to the company for further details regarding the allegations and will update this report if a response is received.
