Lawsuits over Grok deepfakes mount

Musk’s AI company sues its users as victim lawsuits over Grok deepfakes mount

As alleged victims sue the company over AI-generated child sexual abuse material, xAI takes the legal fight to its own users.

By Hassan Ali Kanu

Elon Musk’s xAI has adopted an unusual and aggressive strategy to fend off lawsuits over child sexual abuse material allegedly created by its AI chatbot, Grok.

The company recently sued two of its users, saying they violated X’s terms of service by using Grok to create explicit images of children. xAI is the parent company of the social media platform X, where Grok is housed.

Both of the men xAI has sued are also facing criminal charges.

The company’s lawsuits seek to hold those users responsible for “all reasonable expenses” xAI incurs defending itself against lawsuits their alleged victims file against the company, including damages for “reputational harm.”

Late last month, xAI sued Russell Bloodworth, an Arkansas photographer who is facing more than 100 criminal charges for allegedly using Grok to alter his professional photos of children into child sexual abuse material. Bloodworth has pleaded not guilty.

“[Bloodworth’s] actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage,” xAI wrote in its complaint.

The company is being sued by alleged victims of Bloodworth over images he’s accused of creating with Grok. It asked the court to rule that Bloodworth should have to cover its legal fees in that litigation because Bloodworth violated X’s terms of service to create the allegedly unlawful and abusive images.

Even in instances of criminal conduct, it’s extremely rare for businesses to enforce their terms of service by suing a user.

“It’s not something you really see any other companies doing,” said John Coyle, a law professor at the University of North Carolina and an expert on business contracts and corporate litigation. “The reason why most companies don’t engage in this kind of behavior is because, first, it’s not great for their brand.”

Generally, xAI has enforced X’s terms of service through suspensions, terminating accounts and making legally required reports of suspected child sex abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The company has made nearly 74,000 such reports in 2026 alone, resulting in more than 240 arrests, it said in court filings.

xAI has not said why it’s turning to litigation in certain cases or how it decides when to do so. The company did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.

About two weeks before suing Bloodworth, xAI sued Terry Wayne Harwood, a South Carolina man also accused of using Grok to create CSAM. Harwood has also been criminally charged with sexual exploitation of a minor. The lawsuit makes the same allegations of breach of contract and uses language included verbatim in the later complaint against Bloodworth.

xAI is defending itself in multiple lawsuits over nude or explicit images generated by Grok without the subject’s consent, including the creation of child sexual abuse material.

One class action includes a plaintiff, referred to as South Carolina Roe, who claims that the perpetrator who used Grok to “nudify” images of her as a child was her father.

South Carolina Roe’s attorney, Sophia Rios, told POLITICO that xAI’s lawsuit against Harwood is “too little, too late.” The number of reports regarding Grok-created child sexual abuse material “indicates to me that the actual problem is with their product, which they should fix to prevent this conduct from happening in the first place,” she said.

xAI says in its complaints that the company “builds in technological safeguards to prevent bad actors from engaging in illegal, harmful, or abusive conduct, or otherwise attempting to violate its rules.”

The company is facing at least two other class actions regarding nudification. The company is also defending against at least four individual suits based on Bloodworth’s alleged crimes, with more expected, according to Derek Potts, an attorney representing alleged victims of Bloodworth. All of the cases essentially claim that xAI fails to use industry-standard safeguards used by other AI businesses to prevent the creation of sexualized, non-consensual deepfakes.

Potts told POLITICO the company’s lawsuits against the alleged perpetrators are an attempt to “try to point the finger elsewhere,” adding that he doubts the company can recover a significant sum from Bloodworth and Harwood.