Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court of the state of New York against xAI, alleging that Grok, which is used on the social media platform X, promised to stop generating explicit images but continued to do so.
She is seeking punitive and compensatory damages, claiming dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were generated by Grok.
After two weeks of public outcry at the tool embedded into X being used to create sexualised images of women and children, the company said on Wednesday it would "geoblock" the ability of users "to generate images of real people in bikinis, underwear, and similar attire via the Grok account and in Grok in X" in countries where it was illegal.
St Clair, 27, who is estranged from Musk, is a rightwing influencer, author and political commentator. She and Musk are the parents of a son born in 2024.
She is being represented by Carrie Goldberg, a victims' rights lawyer who specialises in holding tech companies accountable and has previously represented women who were victims of sexual harassment and abuse.
The filing alleges the social media company X "retaliated against her, demonetizing her X account and generating multitudes more images of her, including unlawful images of her in sex positions, covered in semen, virtually nude, and images of her as a child naked".
Images generated by Grok, according to the filing, include one of her as a 14-year-old stripped into a string bikini plus sexualised content of St Clair as an adult, including a request to "put the girl in a bikini made out of floss".
Not only were the images de facto nonconsensual, the filing states, but "Grok and xAI also had explicit knowledge that St Clair was not consenting to the creation of dissemination of these images because of her requests for removal".
Grok also responded to user requests to add tattoos on to St Clair’s body including the words “Elon’s whore”, the filing said.
St Clair, who is Jewish, alleges Grok digitally dressed her in a bikini decorated with swastikas.
The lawsuit states that X “financially benefited from the creation and dissemination of nonconsensual, realistic, sexualized deepfake content depicting Plaintiff as a minor and adult”.
The filing states that “xAI is directly liable for the harassment and explicit images created by its own chatbot, Grok”.
Musk has posted on X that the users of his app are responsible for the images they create. He said recently: “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”
He added: “Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images; it does so only according to user requests.”
X said on Thursday it had “zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content”.
The company has filed a countersuit claiming that according to the terms of service of X, St Clair cannot sue the company in New York but has to do so in Texas.
St Clair previously told the Guardian that she felt “horrified and violated”, adding: “It’s another tool of harassment. Consent is the whole issue.”
Acolytes of Musk had disliked her since she went public about his desire to build a “legion” of children, she said. Musk is the father of 13 other children, with three other women.