Plaintiff alleges xAI trained Grok on child sexual abuse material
A lawsuit filed by a survivor claims that xAI used both real and AI-generated child sexual abuse images to train its Grok model, violating federal law.
A federal complaint filed on Wednesday alleges that xAI incorporated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) into the training data for its Grok image-generation system. The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, says she was a preschool-age victim of abuse in the early 2000s and that her images have been hashed by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Doe says the Canadian centre recently notified her that AI-generated images depicting her had been found on xAI’s platform, which she claims re-traumatized her.
According to the filing, xAI’s terms of service treat public posts on X and outputs generated by Grok as training data by default, and the complaint argues that the company does not explicitly exclude CSAM, non-consensual intimate imagery, or other NSFW content from its training pipeline. The plaintiff further contends that once such material is incorporated into a model, removing its influence is technically difficult, meaning the images could continue to affect Grok’s outputs.
The lawsuit seeks a class-action status to represent other victims whose childhood images may have been used, and it alleges violations of federal child-pornography statutes and Masha’s Law. Plaintiff’s attorney Margaret E. Mabie stated that xAI “did all three” crimes of production, possession, and distribution. The complaint also requests that the court order xAI to delete any CSAM it may be storing and to block Grok from generating any sexualized content, including non-consensual intimate imagery and NSFW material.
xAI did not respond to a request for comment.