Who is Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons suing Grok?

In the lawsuit, she claims that Grok continued to generate and distribute “countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading deepfake content” of her, even after she told the AI chatbot that she “did not consent” to such images. Clair is asking for a jury trial in addition to compensation for infringing on her privacy and causing emotional distress.

The lawsuit also says that X users reportedly uploaded a fully clothed photo of Ashley St Clair when she was 14 years old and asked Grok to undress her, to which the chatbot obliged. Apparently, Grok also agreed to user requests asking to add tattoos onto St Clair’s body, including the words “Elon’s whore.” Clair, who is Jewish, also alleged that Grok generated an image depicting her in a bikini adorned with swastikas.

The filing also states that xAI had information about Grok generating her explicit images and her takedown requests were repeatedly ignored. It goes on to say that X demonetised her account, and that the AI chatbot generated images of her in “sex positions, covered in semen, virtually nude, and images of her as a child naked.”

In a statement to CNN, Clair said that “there is really no consequences for what’s happening right now. They are not taking any measures to stop this behaviour at scale. Guess what? 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.”

Ashley St. Clair is represented by Carrie Goldberg, a lawyer known for holding tech companies accountable for their actions and fighting for victims of sexual harassment and abuse.

“This harm flowed directly from deliberate design choices that enabled Grok to be used as a tool of harassment and humiliation. Companies should not be able to escape responsibility when the products they build predictably cause this kind of harm. We intend to hold Grok accountable and to help establish clear legal boundaries for the entire public’s benefit to prevent AI from being weaponised for abuse,” Goldberg said in a statement to The Guardian.

What is Elon Musk’s response to the Grok controversy?

Musk says that users on X are responsible for the images they ask Grok to generate. In a post, he said that “anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.” The billionaire’s words were reiterated by the platform. X says it has “zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.”

xAI has also filed a countersuit against St. Clair, saying that she cannot sue the company in New York but has to do it in Texas. The state’s Attorney General, General Rob Bonta, has also started an investigation into Grok’s “proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit materials produced using Grok.” The AI chatbot has already been banned in Indonesia and Malaysia, while the UK regulator Ofcom has started a formal investigation.