Prince Harry and Meghan Slam xAI's Challenge to Minnesota Ban on AI Deepfakes Targeting Children

Minnesota showed why Harry and Meghan are right about Grok -- 'technology should not enable predators to target children'

Protecting victims must begin before abusive deepfakes are created Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have taken direct aim at Grok after Minnesota became the first state to enforce a ban on AI "nudification" technology, using an unusually blunt official statement to criticize xAI's attempt to stop the law. Days before the legislation took effect, Elon Musk's AI company filed an emergency legal request seeking to block it, arguing that the measure violates the First Amendment. A federal judge refused to grant the request, allowing the law to go into effect while the broader case continues. The Sussexes made it clear which side they believe this fight should be on. "Technology should not enable predators to target children," their statement begins. "Yet, ahead of Minnesota's first-in-the-nation law banning AI 'nudification' apps taking effect tomorrow, one of the world's largest technology companies sued to stop it. Why?" It is a remarkably direct criticism, one that shifts the conversation away from legal arguments and back toward the people these tools can harm. Whether Minnesota's law ultimately survives every constitutional challenge is a question for the courts, but Harry and Meghan have identified something larger than one lawsuit. AI companies are racing to make image generation more powerful while governments scramble to prevent those same tools from being weaponized against real people. When a company fights to preserve technology that can create convincing fake nude images of recognizable adults and children, it is easy to see why the couple argues that the industry's priorities deserve much closer scrutiny. Sussex vs. Musk AI has become extraordinarily good at manipulating images, but that includes convincing fake intimate photographs with only a few prompts. And it has spread far faster than the laws designed to deal with it. Minnesota's legislation attempts to tackle the problem at its source by preventing apps and websites from offering AI nudification tools in the first place. Rather than waiting until fake images have already spread across social media or messaging apps, lawmakers are trying to make the technology itself less readily available. Whether every provision survives constitutional scrutiny remains to be seen, but the intention is difficult to misunderstand. Harry and Meghan clearly believe that technology companies have had plenty of opportunities to address the issue voluntarily and have failed to do so. Their statement praises Minnesota's bipartisan action as "an example of leadership fit for the digital age," adding that lawmakers recognized "this technology, if not stopped, would protect predators and hurt innocent people, especially women and girls." The Sussexes are slicing through the tangled debate over algorithms against constitutional doctrine. Those issues matter, but it can miss the forest for the trees if people forget that these synthetic nudes begin with an identifiable person whose image has been manipulated without permission. AI models as neutral tools whose morality depends entirely on the user. But laws often are stricter when any tool is used to hurt children for a reason. And the claim that Grok's moderation system is enough has proven untrue. But the feature does not stop being Grok's responsibility simply because someone else typed the prompt. Safety should not be an optional feature The Sussexes refuse to treat this as an abstract policy dispute. "Big Tech companies are raising billions claiming AI will bring society forward, yet they retaliate against basic safety measures to keep children safe," they wrote. "Can AI make our world better while it enables the worst in humans? Should our children pay the price while we wait to find out?" Those are uncomfortable questions for AI companies racing to release increasingly capable products. Every major developer wants to ship the next breakthrough before its competitors do. Safety work, moderation systems and abuse prevention rarely generate the same excitement as flashy new features demonstrated on stage. xAI is hardly alone in facing this challenge. Every major AI company has struggled with image generation, impersonation and deepfakes. The difference here is the explicit pushback against a state trying to make them take some responsibility for how their technology is misused. The legal arguments will continue for months, and there's no way to tell yet what the final version of the law will look like. Courts have to balance free speech and public safety, and that's not simple. But the fact that AI has made creating nonconsensual intimate imagery dramatically easier remains, and Harry and Meghan are right to zero in on that human cost over legal theory. The debate matters because children's safety matters. Whether the companies building these tools can be made to accept meaningful responsibility when those capabilities are turned against children may be decided in courts, but Harry and Meghan are correct that it shouldn't take lawyers for them to do the right thing here. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

Harry and Meghan blast Elon Musk, Big Tech over 'predatory' AI features

LONDON - Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan are once again taking aim at Big Tech. The royal couple, issued a scathing statement on their official website, titled: "Can we all agree technology should not enable predators to target children?" which accused tech giants of putting profit ahead of the digital safety of women and young people. The statement, dated August 2026, began by praising the state of Minnesota for its recent decision to outlaw AI "nudification" technology. The ban passed unanimously in the Minnesota state Senate with a 65-0 vote, becoming the first of its kind nationwide. Meghan and Harry described the law as "an example of leadership fit for the digital age: a bi-partisan decision to stop technology from enabling predatory behavior disproportionately targeting women and children." The royal couple, without naming Elon Musk directly, slammed "the trillionaire leader of the tech company responsible for X's Grok" for suing the state in a bid to "stop the law from going into place." A representative for Musk did not immediately return a request for comment Monday, Aug. 3. Last week, Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, sued Minnesota over the ban and called for the law to be blocked. The legal complaint noted that the state had the right to block AI from being used to create sexualized content but that the law "extends far beyond that goal" and was potentially a violation of freedom of speech. Meghan and Harry accused the company of "mitigating risk to their bottom line instead of aggressively responding to the clear evidence their product features are enabling predators to prey on women and children." Grok has come under widespread scrutiny specifically for its "Imagine" feature, which has been used to create sexualized deepfakes of people without their consent. In the Google Play store, xAI touts the Grok product as "designed to be maximally truthful, useful, and curious." On Friday, July 31, a federal judge denied xAI's request to block of the law but said a hearing would be held on Aug. 19 on whether to grant a preliminary injunction, NBC News reported. "Big Tech companies are raising billions claiming AI will bring society forward, yet they retaliate against basic safety measures to keep children safe," the Sussexes' statement said. "Can AI make our world better while it enables the worst in humans? Should our children pay the price while we wait to find out?" Harry and Meghan have long expressed concern over the dark side of social media, along with the rapid development of AI tools. The pair say the issue of online safety is a global humanitarian issue and have spent years calling on platforms to implement better content-moderation policies and bolder online protections. In 2024, the couple said they had been spending time with families of children who had died or been negatively affected as a result of social media. "The best parenting in the world cannot keep children safe from these platforms," a statement from the royal couple, who share two children, read. Their statement came one year after they spoke on a panel in New York about the mental health challenges faced by young people who use social media. "People are getting hurt - and people, specifically children, are dying," Meghan said during the panel discussion. In 2021, Harry blamed social media for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, citing an "avalanche of misinformation" and a and "a barrage of mistruths" that he said allowed conspiracy theories to thrive, threatening democracy with violence and death.

Prince Harry and Meghan's charitable arm urges Congress to act on AI deepfakes: 'More bills are sitting, waiting'

Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's charitable organization, Archewell Philanthropies, is urging lawmakers to act on legislation involving AI deepfakes as it calls out Big Tech for what it describes as retaliation "against basic safety measures to keep children safe." A statement recently posted on the couple's website titled, "Can we all agree technology should not enable predators to target children?" applauded Minnesota for passing a ban on AI "nudification" apps earlier this year. The legislation, signed by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) in May, bans the access or promotion in the North Star State of technology that could allow users to turn authentic images of an individual into fake, pornographic ones. The bill includes civil penalties of up to $500,000 for "each unlawful access, download, or use." Last week, a federal judge denied a request by xAI, Elon Musk's company, for a temporary restraining order that would've stopped the AI ban. "The Minnesota law is an example of leadership fit for the digital age: a bi-partisan decision to stop technology from enabling predatory behavior disproportionately targeting women and children," the statement on Harry and Meghan's site said. "Even in a state with many differences of opinions, it was not controversial." "Leaders in other parts of the U.S. like Pennsylvania, North Dakota and California, have followed Minnesota proposing interventions and launching investigations to stop A.I. technology designed to allow the abuse, harassment, stalking, and sexualization of targeted individuals and children," the post on the pair's website stated. "These state-level initiatives come after the successful passing of The Take It Down Act in U.S. Congress, which criminalizes the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images and AI-generated deepfakes, and requires online platforms to remove them." President Trump last year signed the Take it Down Act, the bipartisan legislation that was championed by first lady Melania Trump. "Archewell Philanthropies applauds leadership taking the tech-fueled sexualization of women and children seriously and doing all they can to keep society safe," the statement said. "Still more bills are sitting, waiting to be prioritized as the need for protection grows," the post said, noting that the Defiance Act, a bill that would create a civil right of action for survivors of nonconsensual deepfakes and which Paris Hilton has been a vocal proponent of, has "been passed by the Senate twice but has yet to make it to a vote on the House floor." "This begs the question: why the delay? The answer may lie in the deepest offense to families and children: the tech industry's commitment to pushback on these bills to protect their bottom line," the post on Harry and Meghan's site said. The pair, who wed in 2018, announced in 2020 that they were stepping down as full-time working members of the British royal family and moved to California. "Big Tech has taken shocking steps to limit restrictions on or accountability for these objectively predatory A.I. product features," the statement said. "Most recently, ahead of the Minnesota law to ban 'nudification' apps going into effect," the statement continued, "the trillionaire leader of the tech company responsible for X's Grok, sued the state of Minnesota to stop the law from going into place," the post said, without naming Musk. "If one wonders why someone would try to stop a ban on AI technology producing deepfakes of people and children in the nude without their consent, they need look no further than the three different groups, including a UK lawmaker, an Arkansas family, and five children from Tennessee, all filing new lawsuits against that same Grok feature, alleging it created sexual material of them, just this week," the statement said. "The company is mitigating risk to their bottom line instead of aggressively responding to the clear evidence their product features are enabling predators to prey on women and children. A representative for xAI didn't immediately respond to ITK's request for comment. "Big Tech companies are raising billions claiming AI will bring society forward, yet they retaliate against basic safety measures to keep children safe," the Archewell Philanthropies post said. "Can AI make our world better while it enables the worst in humans? Should our children pay the price while we wait to find out?"