An AI Undressed Women and Children on X. Now Its Maker Is Suing a User.
On July 15, 2026, Elon Musk's artificial-intelligence company, xAI, sued a South Carolina man it accused of using its Grok chatbot to generate child sexual abuse material. The filing came months after Grok publicly turned photographs of real women and children into sexualized images on X, drawing bans and investigations across several countries.
On July 15, 2026, xAI, the artificial-intelligence company owned by Elon Musk, filed suit against a South Carolina man it accused of using its Grok chatbot to create child sexual abuse material, in what CNN described as one of the first cases a technology company has brought against a user for allegedly making explicit content with its own AI. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, names Terry Wayne Harwood, who was arrested earlier this year in South Carolina on charges of sexually exploiting a minor.
xAI alleges that Harwood created multiple accounts and entered “misleading prompts” to “circumvent” what the company called its “built-in safeguards,” converting non-sexual photographs of adults and minors into explicit images without the subjects' consent, according to CNN. The company said Grok had refused many of his requests before he reworded them to evade its filters. xAI asked the court for monetary damages and an order permanently barring Harwood from using Grok.
In the same complaint, the company said it had taken down 52,222 accounts and submitted 73,604 reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children so far in 2026 — actions it said had contributed to at least 244 arrests, CNN reported.
A tool that stripped real photos
The lawsuit followed months of scrutiny. In late December 2025, after Musk promoted a one-click feature that let X users edit images with Grok, users inundated the chatbot with requests to remove clothing from, or otherwise sexualize, photographs of real women and children, according to PBS NewsHour and NPR.
California's attorney general, Rob Bonta, opened an investigation into the company, saying xAI “appears to be facilitating the large-scale production of deepfake nonconsensual intimate images that are being used to harass women and girls across the internet, including via the social media platform X,” according to his office. Bonta said his inquiry would examine “the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok.”
An analysis cited by Bonta's office found that more than half of some 20,000 images Grok generated between Christmas and the New Year “depicted people in minimal clothing, and some of those appeared to be children,” the attorney general's office said. Separately, Bloomberg reported the state probe as it opened in January.
Blocks, bans and investigations
The images drew action abroad. Indonesia and Malaysia temporarily blocked Grok, and regulators in the United Kingdom, the European Union, France and India opened inquiries or issued warnings, according to Al Jazeera and NPR.
X said it would “geoblock the ability” of users to generate images of people in “bikinis, underwear, and similar attire” in places where doing so is illegal, and it limited image editing to paying subscribers “to ensure that individuals who attempt to abuse the Grok account to violate the law or our policies can be held accountable,” according to PBS NewsHour. Reporters found the editing tool remained reachable to some free users after the restrictions were announced.
xAI as plaintiff and defendant
While xAI has now sued a user, it is also a defendant. In March, minors in Tennessee sued the company, alleging Grok had generated child sexual abuse material depicting them, NPR reported. Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk's children, separately sued xAI over explicit images she said Grok had produced of her, according to NBC News. The company that built the tool, and profited from the traffic around it, is now fighting on both sides of the courtroom over what the tool was used to make.