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<\/p>\nFour people who say Grok generated sexualized images of them without consent are fighting to keep their case in California and to keep their names out of it.<\/p>\n
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A SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California, on June 8, 2026. The federal courthouse in San Jos\u00e9, where four plaintiffs suing Elon Musk\u2019s xAI over-sexualized images generated by its Grok chatbot are fighting the company\u2019s bid to move the case to Texas.\u00a0(Patrick T. Fallon\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
A federal judge in San Jos\u00e9 will decide whether to halt a proposed class action lawsuit accusing Elon Musk\u2019s AI company of creating non-consensual, sexually explicit deepfakes<\/a>, as the company seeks to transfer the case to Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n SpaceXAI, formerly known as xAI, also asked Judge P. Casey Pitts<\/a> on Thursday to pause the federal civil suit during related criminal proceedings under federal law.\u00a0<\/p>\n The suit comes as California Attorney General Rob Bonta and European regulators have also launched investigations<\/a> into whether the platform\u2019s generated sexual images violate local laws.<\/p>\n One plaintiff, a South Carolina woman, said she posted a fully clothed photo of herself to the social media platform X on Jan. 2 and discovered the next day that Grok, xAI\u2019s chatbot, had used it to generate an image of her and posted the result publicly, according to court filings<\/a>. She reported it to X in an attempt to have it taken down.<\/p>\n The four plaintiffs are suing under pseudonyms. Musk is not named as a defendant.\u00a0<\/p>\n Grok was integrated into X in December 2024, initially for premium subscribers, who could tag @grok in a post asking it to edit an image and get the result posted publicly in reply. Plaintiffs say users quickly began prompting it<\/a> with instructions like \u201cRemove her clothes.\u201d A year later, in December 2025, image generation opened to all X users.\u00a0<\/p>\n Plaintiffs\u2019 lawyers say around that time, Grok began generating and disseminating hundreds of thousands of increasingly explicit images of women and minors. xAI restricted the feature again on Jan. 8.<\/p>\n xAI said the three X users clicked a \u201cGot it\u201d button on the update notice, twice each and kept using their accounts through June, which the terms treat as consent. It notes that three judges in this district have already enforced X\u2019s Texas clause.<\/p>\n Attorneys from legal firm Berger Montague said the company failed to show that the plaintiffs agreed to the user terms, including revised terms changed in the middle of the lawsuit. They claimed xAI produced no screenshot of either sign-up screen and never specified which plaintiff saw which.<\/p>\n They note New Jersey Doe created his account in March 2009, when the version of the terms then in effect contained no clause binding users to future revisions.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/RobBontaTrumpGetty.jpg\")
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is briefed by members of his Civil Rights Enforcement Section on litigation challenging the Trump administration at his offices in downtown Los Angeles, California, on March 11, 2025. <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/GettyImages-2255688657.jpg\")
An iPhone screen displays the Grok logo on the Grok AI app on Jan. 11, 2026.<\/p>\n