Grok made sexual image of Ashley St. Clair covered in Swastikas: lawsuit

Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, is suing his company, xAI, alleging its Grok AI tool had been used to generate explicit images of her. These include images of St. Clair, who is Jewish, “stripped and put in a string bikini covered with swastikas,” and “as a child stripped down to a string bikini,” according to a filing reviewed by Newsweek.

The filing follows a global outcry over sexualized deepfake imagery that has proliferated on X. In a recent post on the platform, Musk said that critics of X are politically motivated and using the controversy as an “excuse for censorship.”

In response to a request for comment on a previous story, X directed Newsweek to a statement shared on the platform, which read in part: “We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis. This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”

Newsweek has contacted St. Clair’s attorney, the press departments for X and xAI, and Musk via Tesla’s press department outside of normal business hours for comment.

Why It Matters  

Deepfake imagery of a sexualized nature created by the Grok AI tool has flooded X in recent weeks, with a review from the content analysis firm Copyleaks finding that Grok was generating roughly “one nonconsensual image per minute.”

This prompted significant backlash and multiple women impacted spoke out about the harm posed by this content in what has become a global conversation about AI and deepfake technology. A number of high-profile women have been targeted, including Princess Kate and St. Clair, drawing further attention to the issue.

Multiple countries have now taken action against the platform. Grok has been blocked entirely in Malaysia and Indonesia and is under official investigation in the U.K. and California, where its headquarters are located.  

X has said that they are “committed to making X a safe platform for everyone and continue to have zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.”

What To Know

St. Clair, a conservative influencer and author, is seeking punitive and compensatory damages. The filing describes multiple explicit images but notes: “These are merely the images that she knows about.”

The filing states: “xAI is directly liable for the harassment and explicit images created by its own chatbot, Grok.”

The lawsuit alleges that St. Clair requested the content be removed and reported the images to X, and said “she received an email that there was no violation found” and that “much of the content remained on Grok’s X account and publicly available for over seven days.”

The lawsuit states that “X’s reporting structure is defective” and that “Grok was unreasonably dangerous as designed.”

The filing also alleges that the social media company “retaliated” against St. Clair by “demonetizing her X account and generating multitudes more images of her.”

The lawsuit states that the images were nonconsensual and that Grok and xAI had “explicit knowledge” that St. Clair was not consenting, because of her requests that the images be removed.

St. Clair is being represented by Carrie Goldberg, a victim’s rights attorney and founder of C.A. Goldberg PLLC. Goldberg spoke to Newsweek for a previous story about the legal ramifications of sexualized Grok AI images. She said at the time:”Most AI ‘guardrails’ are voluntary, inconsistent, and easy to evade, which means they function more like talking points than real safety measures.

“This comes at the expense of users, particularly women and children.”

Musk and St. Clair are the parents of a son born in 2024. The two are estranged, and Musk recently announced his intention to file for custody of their child.

What People Are Saying

Elon Musk, in a post on X on January 14: “I not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero. Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests. When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state. There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”

X safety, in a post on the platform: “We take action to remove high-priority violative content, including Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and non-consensual nudity, taking appropriate action against accounts that violate our X Rules. We also report accounts seeking Child Sexual Exploitation materials to law enforcement authorities as necessary.”

Ashley St. Clair, in a post on X on January 12: “And don’t post pics of urself or family here unless u want twitter to tell u that sexual abuse content from its nazi robot isn’t a violation of its terms of service.”

What Happens Next?

Musk has not publicly responded to St. Clair’s lawsuit as of reporting, but the two has a history of making public statements about family and legal matters, so future updates may emerge through online channels.