Topline
Conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair—who allegedly had a child with Elon Musk—filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the billionaire’s AI company xAI, alleging that its chatbot Grok altered her photos to undress her and depicted her in a sexualized manner without her consent.
File photo of conservative influencer and writer Ashley St. Clair.
AFP via Getty Images
Key Facts
In a filing made in a New York State Court, the suit alleges that Grok artificially altered a photo of St. Clair and two of her friends, which stripped her clothes and showed her wearing “a black string bikini.”
When St. Clair responded to the Grok account, noting she had not consented to this, the chatbot replied the image was generated as a “humorous response,” a removal had been requested, the suit added.
St. Clair alleged that despite the Grok account responding that her images won’t be used or altered without her consent, “countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading deepfake content” depicting her was produced.
The suit also alleged that some X users found and shared fully clothed photos of her when she was 14 years old and requested the chatbot to “undress her and put her in a bikini,” and “ Grok obliged.”
St. Clair accused xAI of retaliating against her by demonetizing her social media account on X, removing her blue verification checkmark and banning her from its premium subscription after she requested the removal of the photos.
What Else Does The Lawsuit Say?
The suit alleges that: “Among other things, Grok can convincingly alter real images of fully clothed women and children to depict them in bikinis, performing sex acts, and covered in bruises, semen, and/or blood. Grok’s altered images are designed to and do in fact appear genuine and authentic so that an ordinary viewer would not know they were fake.” The suit also cites xAI’s announcement of Grok’s launch which noted it will “answer spicy questions that are rejected by most other AI systems,” and pointed out that Grok has since introduced a so-called “spicy mode” on its standalone app.
What Has St. Clair Said About The Grok’s Images?
In a post made on X earlier this month, St. Clair wrote: “Grok is now undressing photos of me as a child. This is a website where the owner says to post photos of your children. I really don’t care if people want to call me ‘scorned’ this is objectively horrifying, illegal, and if it has happened to anybody else, DM me. I got time.” Earlier this week she urged people to follow her on Instagram instead of X, and wrote, “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.”
Tangent
xAI filed a notice of removal seeking to transfer the case from state court to the Southern District of New York. St. Clair’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, told the Wall Street Journal that the case has been moved to federal court. Goldberg told the Journal that the influencer’s intent is to “raise awareness about a phenomenon she views as intolerable, and which has produced images such as one of a four-year-old who appeared to be involved in a sex act.”
Key Background
St. Clair’s lawsuit comes a day after X announced it was restricting its AI chatbot Grok’s image generation tool from creating images of real people in revealing clothing. In a post on X’s official Safety account, the platform said it has “implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis.” The company also said it was geoblocking all users from generating “images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X in those jurisdictions where it’s illegal.” However, Musk appeared to dismiss the veracity of reports suggesting X was generating sexualized images of children, saying he is “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.” He added: “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.” The billionaire then appeared to blame some of Grok’s responses on the platform’s “adversarial” users, saying: “There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.” While appearing on CNN on Wednesday night, St. Clair commented on the changes and said, “If you have to add safety after harm, that is not safety. That is simply damage control – and that’s what they’re doing right now.”
What Do We Know About Ashley St. Clair’s Child With Elon Musk?
St. Clair revealed last year that Musk had fathered her son around five months after he was born, but Musk initially did not comment on the child’s paternity. A few months later St. Clair told the Daily Mail that she had to sell her Tesla Model S to “make up for the 60% cut that Elon made to our son’s child support.” Musk responded to this on X and said he did not know if the child was his, but he offered to get a paternity test. He also claimed: “Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.” In response, St. Clair said Musk named the child but refused earlier when asked “to confirm paternity through a test,” she also alleged that the billionaire was trying get court gag order against her. Musk, however, appeared to acknowledge that he fathered St. Claire’s child and wrote on X that he is now seeking custody of over concerns St. Clair “might transition a one-year-old boy.” The custody threat was in response to St. Clair publicly expressing guilt for her anti-trans views, but she at no point suggested that she was seeking to transition her son. St. Clair famously authored a children’s book titled “Elephants Are Not Birds,” which opposes the acceptance of transgender people. St. Clair had described the book as an “unapologetic rebuke” of “transgender acceptance.”
Further Reading
Influencer Who Had Child With Elon Musk Sues xAI Over Deepfake Images (Forbes)
Grok Restricted From Generating Sexualized Images Of People, X Says (Forbes)
Musk Apparently Acknowledges Baby With Ashley St. Clair—And Demands Custody Over Transgender Concerns (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/01/16/ashley-st-clair-who-had-a-child-with-elon-musk-sues-xai-over-sexualized-deepfakes/
