Minnesota Banned Apps That Undress Real People. Musk’s xAI Sued to Stop It.
On July 27, Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence company, xAI, asked a federal court to strike down a Minnesota law — the first of its kind in the United States — that bans the tools used to fabricate nude images of real people without their consent. The company says the ban, due to take effect Aug. 1, violates the First Amendment; the state’s attorney general calls the technology it defends “appalling.”
Days before Minnesota’s new restrictions were set to take hold, Elon Musk’s xAI went to federal court to block them. In a complaint filed July 27 against Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, the company challenged a statute that bans so-called nudification technology — apps and tools that digitally strip clothing from images of identifiable people — arguing the measure sweeps too broadly and tramples constitutionally protected speech, The Associated Press reported. The suit was filed just ahead of the law’s Aug. 1 effective date, according to Bloomberg Law.
A first-in-the-nation ban
The Minnesota measure, signed into law earlier this year by Gov. Tim Walz and described as the first state law of its kind in the country, targets the technology directly rather than only the people who misuse it. It defines nudification as occurring when “an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual,” and it authorizes penalties of $500,000 for each prohibited image, The Associated Press reported. The bill was spearheaded by state Sen. Erin Maye Quade after she learned of a man who had generated sexualized images and videos of more than 80 women he knew, using photographs taken from their social-media accounts without their knowledge, CBS News reported.
xAI’s First Amendment case
xAI argues that generating images and video through its platform is protected First Amendment activity and that the statute burdens both the company and its users’ freedom of expression. The law, its lawyers wrote, “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification,’” according to The Associated Press. The company also called the financial exposure excessive, saying the penalties could cost a business whose users generated 100,000 prohibited images “an eye-popping $50 billion dollars,” Bloomberg Law reported. In its filing, xAI said it does not contest the state’s interest in prohibiting nonconsensual nude images of real people, and that it “strictly prohibits” users from producing them — but contends the Minnesota law reaches well beyond that goal, CBS News reported.
‘See you in court, creep’
State officials responded sharply. Walz wrote across social media, “See you in court, creep,” while Maye Quade said in a statement, “It’s sad that the creators of nudification technology would rather protect their ill-gotten profits than protect us from image-based sexual abuse,” CBS News reported. Ellison, the named defendant, said using artificial intelligence to generate nude images of people against their will is “appalling,” adding that “AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and can cause immense harm on an emotional, personal, and professional level,” according to The Associated Press.
A pattern around Grok
The lawsuit is the latest flashpoint over xAI’s Grok chatbot, which earlier this year generated sexualized images of real women and children on X, drawing regulatory scrutiny abroad. In March, an Amsterdam court ordered xAI to stop generating and distributing nonconsensual sexual imagery in the Netherlands, imposing a threatened fine of 100,000 euros a day in one of Europe’s first binding injunctions against an AI image generator, Al Jazeera reported. The Minnesota case now tests a different question: whether an American state can bar the technology outright, or whether such bans collide with the First Amendment. If the statute survives, it could become a template for other states weighing how to hold the makers of nudification tools — not only their users — to account.