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Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.
In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.'”
The Minnesota law, which goes into effect on Saturday, targets apps and websites that give people the ability to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery, levying $500,000 fines each time a user creates explicit deepfakes. The law, passed in April, was spearheaded by Minnesota state Sen. Erin Maye Quade after she learned about a man who created sexualized images and videos of of over 80 women he knew using their social media photos without their consent.
Lawyers for xAI argued that the law violates First Amendment protections and said the penalties are too steep, potentially costing a business whose users created 100,000 prohibited images “an eye-popping $50 billion dollars.”
Maye Quade told CNBC in September that the proposed bill was similar to older laws prohibiting the act of peeping into windows to capture explicit photos.
SpaceXAI, as the artificial intelligence business is now known, is facing a proposed class action lawsuit from plaintiffs who allege that the company’s Grok AI chatbot and image generator was used to create and share child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) based on real photos or videos of them. The suit also alleges that xAI failed to share information with authorities about alleged perpetrators who used Grok to “nudify” their images.
Musk’s company argues that it “strictly prohibits” users from generating nude or sexualized images of people without their consent. The company noted in its complaint in Minnesota that it filed suit against users who “evade its extensive technological blockers to generate such images in violation.”
In an emailed statement, Maye Quade said the law protects First Amendment rights, adding, “It’s sad that the creators of nudification technology would rather protect their ill-gotten profits than protect us from image-based sexual abuse.”
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, wrote in a post across social media, “See you in court, creep.”
XAI filed a similar suit to challenge a California law intended to thwart AI-generated, or “deepfake” content in the state. The earlier effort was partly successful, as a federal judge struck down the law that would have restricted AI-generated deepfakes during elections.
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