A survivor of child sexual abuse has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk's xAI, alleging that its chatbot Grok used real images of her abuse to generate new, illegal AI-produced child sexual abuse material (CSAM) depicting her. The class-action complaint, filed in a US district court in California, accuses xAI of ignoring industry-standard safeguards against such material, allowing it to spread on the social media platform X. The case is notable because it is the latest in a series of lawsuits accusing Musk's AI company of generating and distributing CSAM, and adds to mounting legal and reputational pressure on xAI, which was acquired by SpaceX in February.

The lawsuit differs from previous cases, such as one involving Tennessee teenagers, by alleging that Grok used pre-existing, hash-identifiable CSAM rather than manipulating innocuous photos of minors. Attorneys said the Canadian Centre for Child Protection used digital fingerprinting to confirm the AI-generated images matched a known series of abuse material, in circulation for around 20 years, depicting the plaintiff when she was pre-school aged. Musk denied in January that Grok had produced "any naked underage images", though xAI later sued two of its own users over alleged CSAM generation. Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate found Grok generated millions of sexualised images, including thousands depicting children, during a period of loose safeguards earlier this year; neither xAI nor SpaceX responded to requests for comment.