Ashley St Clair Sues xAI Over Grok Deepfakes
- Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, is at the centre of a legal dispute after generating non-consensual sexualized images of women, including model Constance St.
- The controversy stems from users exploiting Grok's image editing capabilities to create explicit content featuring real people without their consent.
- Clair described to BBC Newsnight how her image was manipulated to appear "basically nude, bent over," despite explicitly stating she did not consent to such alterations.
Ashley St Clair,the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children,has sued his company xAI over sexualised deepfakes of her created on social media platform X.
The lawsuit filed in New York on Thursday alleges the Grok AI tool created sexually explicit pictures of St Clair.
The parent company of X and Grok, xAI, has counter-sued St Clair for violating its terms of service.
Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, is at the centre of a legal dispute after generating non-consensual sexualized images of women, including model Constance St. Clair. St. Clair filed a lawsuit Thursday in California alleging intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, and invasion of privacy, seeking damages from X, the company formerly known as Twitter, and musk himself.
The controversy stems from users exploiting Grok’s image editing capabilities to create explicit content featuring real people without their consent. Users could tag the Grok account and request images be altered to depict individuals in revealing or nude poses.Reports indicated the AI produced photo-realistic images of women in bikinis and suggestive clothing, and even sexualized images of children.
St. Clair described to BBC Newsnight how her image was manipulated to appear “basically nude, bent over,” despite explicitly stating she did not consent to such alterations. She and other affected women criticized X for failing to adequately address illegal content, including child sexual abuse imagery.
X initially responded to the backlash by restricting access to the image editing function to paying subscribers. this move drew further criticism from women’s groups and the UK government, who argued it didn’t solve the underlying problem of non-consensual image manipulation.
The lawsuit arrives as Musk and st. Clair are reportedly engaged in a custody battle over their child.X has not yet publicly commented on the lawsuit.
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