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xAI Sues Grok User Over Child Abuse Images
xAI has sued a Grok user in Texas, alleging he used the chatbot to create child sexual abuse material and non-consensual sexual imagery.
Image: Gizmodo
xAI has sued a South Carolina Grok user in federal court in Texas, accusing him of using the chatbot to create child sexual abuse material and non-consensual sexual imagery, according to Reuters. The defendant, Terry Wayne Harwood, was arrested in February, Reuters reported.
In the complaint, xAI says Harwood repeatedly violated the company’s Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy through what it called “abhorrent abuse” of Grok. The lawsuit also stresses that Grok is a “neutral tool, subject to user control,” placing responsibility on users for illegal output.
xAI says it has reported child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children 73,604 times in 2026, leading to the arrest of at least 244 individuals. The suit points to rules banning:
- “Undressing or nudifying real persons, or otherwise altering a real person’s image or likeness to depict them in an intimate or sexual context”
- “Depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”
That position clashes with how Grok was previously presented. Last year, users on X widely circulated sexually explicit deepfakes made with the app, and Gizmodo says it tested Grok in August 2025 and found it easier to get the bot to undress women than men. The outlet also says inappropriate images of children were reportedly generated in late 2025.
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In January, members of the UK government threatened X with fines or a ban over its ability to create non-consensual sexual images. Musk responded:
“They just want to suppress free speech.”
The new lawsuit says Harwood’s actions were “a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends,” while also exposing xAI to legal and reputational risk. But complaints cited by Gizmodo suggest some users had come to expect exactly the kind of explicit image generation xAI is now trying to shut down, and were frustrated when newer moderation blocked prompts that had previously worked.
AI Editor
Ava covers the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence, from foundational models and research labs to the real-world economics of intelligence. With a background in computational linguistics, she cuts through the hype to find out what actually works. She firmly believes that benchmarks are just marketing until reproduced in the wild.
via Gizmodo
