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The mayor and city council of Baltimore, Maryland, filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI company on Tuesday, alleging that its Grok chatbot violated consumer protections by generating nonconsensual sexualized images.
Baltimore’s lawsuit argues that xAI deceptively marketed Grok as a general-purpose AI assistant and X as a mainstream social media site, failing to disclose the risks, limitations and exposure to harm that come with using the platform and chatbot. The suit, filed in the circuit court for Baltimore city, argues that the court has jurisdiction over xAI given that the company advertises and operates in Baltimore.
“Grok has flooded the feeds of Baltimore’s X users with NCII (non-consensual intimate imagery) and CSAM (child sexual abuse material),” the city’s complaint states. “Grok further exposed Baltimore residents to the risk that any photograph they uploaded – of themselves or of their children – could be ingested by Grok and transformed into sexually degrading deepfakes without their knowledge or consent”.
xAI did not immediately return a request for comment.
xAI has faced multiple lawsuits and international investigations over its Grok AI product in recent months, following a period when the chatbot generated millions of AI-altered sexualized images earlier this year. Many of these sexualized images were created using photos of women without their consent, according to researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which also estimated that Grok produced about 23,000 sexualized images of children over an 11-day period in December and January.
“We’re talking about tech companies enabling the sexual exploitation of children. Our city will not stand by and allow this to continue; it’s a threat to privacy, dignity, and public safety, and those responsible must be held accountable,” the Baltimore mayor, Brandon Scott, said in a statement.
Musk has denied any knowledge of Grok producing child sexual abuse material, stating in January that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero.” The company added restrictions to Grok’s image generation capabilities in earlier January following backlash and threats of regulatory action from multiple countries.
Baltimore’s case is unique in that it is alleging violations of city ordinance and consumer protection, as opposed to other suits brought by individual users claiming personal and reputational harms.
“The city is setting a powerful example for municipalities nationwide in confronting a novel and rapidly advancing technology – and an emerging area of law – where accountability has not yet caught up with innovation,” Adam Levitt, an attorney representing Baltimore in the case, said in a statement.
In another case against xAI filed earlier this month, three Tennessee teenage girls alleged that Grok used photos of them to create and distribute child sexual abuse material. The class-action lawsuit was the first filed by minors following Grok’s nonconsensual image generation scandal, and alleged that a third-party app used xAI’s technology to generate fully nude images of the girls which were then shared online.