The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his artificial intelligence company, alleging that its Grok chatbot generated sexually explicit images of her, including images in which she appeared to be underage.
Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit in the New York state supreme court against xAI, the company behind Grok, which operates on Musk’s social media platform, X. She claims the tool continued to generate explicit images of her despite promises that such content would be restricted.
St Clair is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages, alleging that dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were created by Grok without her consent.
The lawsuit follows weeks of public criticism over Grok being used to produce sexualised images of women and children. On Wednesday, xAI said it would “geoblock” the generation of images of real people in bikinis, underwear or similar attire in countries where such content is illegal.
St Clair, 27, is a rightwing influencer, author and political commentator. She is estranged from Musk and gave birth to their son in 2024.
She is being represented by Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer specialising in victims’ rights and cases against technology companies. Goldberg said Grok was “not a reasonably safe product” and described it as a public nuisance.
“Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing non-consensual, abusive and degrading images of her and publishing them on X,” Goldberg said. “This harm flowed directly from deliberate design choices that enabled Grok to be used as a tool of harassment and humiliation.”
The filing alleges that X retaliated against St Clair by demonetising her account and generating further explicit images of her. These allegedly included images depicting her in sexual positions, covered in semen, virtually nude, and portrayed as a child.
According to the lawsuit, Grok generated an image of St Clair as a 14-year-old wearing a string bikini, as well as other sexualised images of her as an adult. One prompt allegedly requested that she be placed “in a bikini made out of floss”.
The filing states that the images were not only created without consent, but that xAI had explicit knowledge she objected to their creation and circulation, citing her repeated requests for their removal.
The lawsuit also claims Grok responded to requests to digitally add tattoos to her body, including the words “Elon’s whore”.
St Clair, who is Jewish, further alleges that Grok generated images of her wearing a bikini decorated with swastikas.
The lawsuit argues that X financially benefited from the creation and spread of non-consensual, realistic, sexualised deepfake content depicting her as both a minor and an adult. It states that xAI is directly liable for the images created by its chatbot.
Musk has previously said users are responsible for the content they generate using Grok. “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content,” he wrote on X. He added that Grok only generates images in response to user requests.
X said on Thursday that it has “zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content”.
The company has filed a countersuit, arguing that under X’s terms of service, St Clair is required to bring any legal action in Texas rather than New York.
St Clair has previously told the Guardian that she felt “horrified and violated”, describing the images as another form of harassment. “Consent is the whole issue,” she said.
She said some supporters of Musk had targeted her after she went public about his desire to build a “legion” of children. Musk is the father of 13 other children with three other women.
