xAI’s last-minute scramble to stop Minnesota’s anti-nudification app law
xAI is suing the Minnesota Attorney General to block a new state law that restricts 'nudification' apps, arguing the statute infringes on First Amendment rights. The company faces potential penalties for its Grok AI image-editing features, which have previously been criticized for generating nonconsensual explicit content.
Why it matters
This case highlights the growing legal tension between state-level AI regulation and federal free speech protections regarding generative AI content.
xAI is suing Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison over a law passed back in May that broadly targets “nudification” apps, claiming that the statute’s punitive provisions leave the company with “no practical choice but to restrict Grok Imagine’s image-editing features in various ways.” The law, the company argues, violates the First Amendment.
Back in January, Grok flooded the internet with millions of sexually explicit deepfakes, including images of minors. In another era, a content moderation disaster of this magnitude would have had the CEO flipping the kill switch on the product within hours. But in Elon Musk’s brave new world, the chatbot was left to pump out pornographic images for days. “Grok now hitting #1 on the App Store in one country after another!” he posted in the midst of the deepfake epidemic.
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