Companies that allow users to generate nude images of real people face fines of $500,000 per violation under state law.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence platform is challenging a Minnesota law that says companies can be held liable if users “nudify” real people by altering an existing photograph or video.
Musk’s company xAI, maker of the popular Grok AI tool, is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to block the law, which is set to kick in on Aug. 1.
Violators can be fined up to $500,000 for each image.
According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, approximately 117 million people had used Grok as of March 1 this year. If 100 of those users violated Minnesota’s law, it could cost the company $50 million in fines.
xAI said it would disable Grok’s image-editing feature for Minnesotans.
Ellison said he will “see X in court.”
“There are plenty of worthy debates to have about AI. This is not one of them. AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and could cause them immense harm on many levels,” Ellison responded to the lawsuit in a social media post on July 28.
Grok’s terms of service already prohibit users from “nudifying real persons, or otherwise altering a real person’s image or likeness to depict them in an intimate or sexual context.”
But xAI’s lawyers argue that the language of Minnesota’s law is too vague, and companies may be on the hook for pictures that are harmless.
The complaint stated that the law “punishes AI platforms that allow users to alter images of real people to depict an “intimate part.”
According to Minnesota law, that includes things such as the inner thigh, or part of a breast or buttock.
In its court filing, the company references a viral AI-generated photo posted by President Donald Trump to his Truth Social account on May 1.
The photo depicts Trump, Marco Rubio and JD Vance, along with an unidentified woman, sitting in the Washington Memorial Reflecting Pool, which was undergoing renovation ordered by the president at the time. All are wearing bathing suits.
“People routinely wear shorts in public that expose some or all of their inner thighs; men may go shirtless in public, exposing their breasts; a woman’s swimsuit may expose some or all of her inner thigh; men and women wear Speedos, bikinis, or other types of swimsuits or apparel that expose their breasts and buttocks, at least in part,” the complaint said.
Aside from being overbroad, xAI argues, the law violates the company’s First Amendment free speech rights, and those of its users. Other laws also make the new statute unnecessary.
“Minnesota law and the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act already prohibit and provide remedies for the knowing, nonconsensual dissemination of deepfakes” showing nudity, the complaint says.
