Survivor of Childhood Sexual Abuse Sues xAI Over Grok AI's Use of Exploitative Training Data

Elon Musk's xAI used child porn to train Grok models, lawsuit says

xAI has now been accused of training Grok on child sex abuse materials (CSAM), as regulators and courts continue to probe how far the problem goes, and some Grok users have been arrested. In a complaint filed on Wednesday, a plaintiff known as Jane Doe explained that she was preschool-age in the early 2000s when adult men repeatedly raped her to create CSAM to sell to pedophiles online. Since then, Doe's images have been hashed by groups like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP). For her safety, Doe has opted to receive alerts from the US Department of Justice Victim Notification System any time she may be a victim in a new criminal investigation. Although she has received countless alerts, she was shocked when the CCCP notified her that it had identified AI-generated CSAM on xAI that depicted her. This re-traumatized Doe, whose complaint alleged that messages were found on online forums "between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM." Now, Doe fears that xAI has not only made it easier to make more violative images of the most distressing time in her life, but also that xAI allegedly has stored the images that Grok generates and uses those outputs to further train Grok. Because of this, she believes that Grok has been trained on both the initial set of images that have haunted her for more than 20 years and the more recent AI-generated ones. This is the first case to accuse xAI of training on CSAM, and the complaint does not go into great detail on that claim. Previously, Ars reported on a controversial dataset that was later scrubbed after researchers found CSAM in the training data, but there's no indication xAI trained on that data. In a press release from lawyers representing Doe, it's explained that Doe's images were included in a CSAM Hash List maintained by NCMEC, and "that same material" allegedly "was part of the dataset xAI used to build Grok's image and video generating capabilities." The complaint similarly only alleged that "CSAM depicting Plaintiff with its longstanding well-known hash values has been used as a part of the dataset used by xAI." More detail is shared on claims alleging that Grok trains on AI CSAM, however. "Because Grok's terms treat public X posts and Grok's own outputs as training data by default, publicly posting an image does not just expose it to viewers, but also feeds [it] directly into the pipeline xAI uses to train and improve its model and thereby generate further images," Doe's complaint said. The lawsuit further noted that while xAI filters out violent content in Grok outputs to exclude it from training data, xAI's terms notably do not specify if CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), or NSFW material are "excluded categories." It seems to follow then that "because full removal of a training example's influence from an already-trained model is technically difficult and not something that xAI has publicly claimed to have done, any CSAM ingested into training before takedown likely continued to shape the model's outputs even after the original images were removed from public view," Doe's complaint said. Destroy all Grok CSAM, Doe says In her proposed class action, Doe seeks to put an end to Grok's harmful outputs. If approved, the class would represent every victim whose childhood images have been used to generate Grok CSAM. The lawsuit accuses X of violating federal child pornography laws, as well as Masha's Law, both of which give CSAM survivors a right to sue on claims of production, possession, and distribution. A lawyer for Doe, Margaret E. Mabie, suggested in the press release that all three are crimes and "xAI did all three." If Doe wins, xAI could owe money damages to every victim who can prove that Grok generated CSAM based on their real photos. Doe's also asked the court to order xAI to destroy all Grok-generated CSAM that it may be storing on its servers and using to train Grok models. Additionally, she wants xAI to block Grok from ever generating CSAM, which her complaint suggested would require blocking Grok from any sexualized outputs, including NCII and NSFW "bikini pics" that Musk has promoted. Sarah London, one of Doe's lawyers, said in the press release that Doe "has lived for nearly two decades knowing that images of the worst thing that ever happened to her are circulating among predators online, and that they can resurface at any moment. xAI must be held responsible for knowingly training its models on images of the horrific abuse she suffered, and on the abuse images of every other survivor in this class." X did not respond to Ars' request to comment.

Elon Musk's Grok hit with another lawsuit from child sexual abuse survivor

Victims of Grok's controversial "nudify" features are taking the company to court. Credit: PABLO VERA / Contributor / AFP via Getty Images Elon Musk's SpacexAI (formerly xAI) is facing another lawsuit over Grok's nonconsensual deepfake features. The proposed nationwide class action lawsuit, filed today, alleges that the AI company trained its chatbot on data sets containing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) featuring real children. SpacexAI did not adequately "block explicit content, prevent nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes of real people, and filter abusive material out of their training datasets," the lawsuit claims. The lead plaintiff, a victim of childhood sexual violence and CSAM referred to as Jane Doe, claims images depicting her assault were used to train Grok and that the chatbot generated new sexually explicit images of her based on the material. It also claims her likeness inspired other digitally-generated images of minors. "Our client has lived for nearly two decades knowing that images of the worst thing that ever happened to her are circulating among predators online, and that they can resurface at any moment," Sarah London, counsel for Doe, said in a statement. "xAI must be held responsible for knowingly training its models on images of the horrific abuse she suffered, and on the abuse images of every other survivor in this class." CSAM is verified and stored by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) as part of ongoing cases and to prevent further dissemination. Images are converted into unique digital signatures, or fingerprints, and stored on what is known as a Hash List. Hash lists are used by internet service providers to automatically detect CSAM without needing to reference original materials. This is one of several class action lawsuits brought against the company for the chatbot's controversial "nudify" features and alleged role in generating CSAM, following an international child exploitation scandal that led several countries to temporarily suspend access to the AI tool. In January, a woman filed a proposed class action lawsuit citing emotional distress caused by X users who used Grok to digitally alter photos of her into sexually revealing outfits. The lawsuit alleges SpacexAI created "a generative artificial intelligence chatbot that humiliates and sexually exploits women and girls by undressing them and posing them in sexual positions in deepfake images publicly posted on X." In March, three teenagers sued the company for Grok's role in generating thousands of sexually explicit images of them as minors, after being notified of the images by law enforcement. That lawsuit was expanded earlier this month, adding two additional plaintiffs in an updated claim that SpacexAI did not effectively report instances of CSAM to NCMEC, which is mandated by law. The lawsuit also mentions Stability AI, the makers of the popular text-to-image model Stable Diffusion, as an additional defendant.

Child abuse victim sues Elon Musk's xAI over AI-generated images

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI is accused of using a child sexual abuse victim's decades-old images to generate new abusive material through its Grok chatbot, according to a lawsuit filed in a California federal court. The complaint, lodged Wednesday in the Northern District of California by an anonymous plaintiff identified as Jane Doe 1, alleges that xAI designed Grok to alter real photographs of identifiable people into sexual content and then published the results directly to the X social media platform (formerly Twitter). The plaintiff is a victim who was first identified by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in the early 2000s and images of her abuse have circulated online for nearly two decades. Grok, the suit alleged, drew on that material to produce new imagery of her. The AI-generated material depicting the plaintiff was identified by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the suit said. SpaceX, the parent company of xAI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The suit seeks damages under so-called Masha's Law, a US statute allowing victims of federal child pornography offenses to recover at least $150,000 per violation, and asks the court to order the destruction of any illegal material the company holds. The filing traces the allegations to a surge of Grok-generated sexual imagery that began in late December, after Musk asked the chatbot to depict him in a bikini. Citing research by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the complaint says Grok produced more than three million sexualized images in the 11 days to January 8, including over 23,000 that appeared to show children. xAI initially responded by restricting image generation to paying subscribers rather than disabling the feature, the lawsuit alleges. The complaint contrasts xAI's approach with rivals including OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta, which largely block sexual image requests, and points to the company's marketing of a "spicy mode" for its Grok video tool. The case is at least the second class action to accuse xAI over Grok-generated abuse material. A separate suit brought this year by three Tennessee teenagers has since been expanded to include additional plaintiffs and to name image-creator Stability AI as a defendant. xAI was acquired by Musk's rocket company SpaceX in February. The plaintiff has demanded a jury trial.