Three Tennessee minors filed a federal class action lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI in the Northern District of California alleging that the company’s AI model, Grok, generated child sexual abuse material using images of the plaintiffs. The Center for Countering Digital Hate estimated that Grok produced 23,338 sexualized images of children between December 29, 2025, and January 9, 2026. The complaint is filed in federal court in the Northern District of California and seeks to proceed as a class action on behalf of affected minors.
The complaint filed by three Tennessee minors alleges that xAI’s image-making model Grok generated AI-created child sexual abuse material using the plaintiffs’ real images. It alleges those altered images circulated on Discord, Telegram, and file-sharing sites. The complaint states a perpetrator accessed Grok through a third-party application licensed to use xAI’s technology.
It asserts that plaintiffs seek damages for those alleged violations, including at least $150,000 per violation under Masha’s Law. The complaint seeks restitution under California’s Unfair Competition Law, disgorgement of revenues, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and a permanent injunction. The filing presents the claims as a federal class action in the Northern District of California on behalf of affected minors.
The complaint seeks both statutory and equitable relief. The plaintiffs ask to represent a class of similarly affected minors.
Elon Musk posted on X in January that he was not aware of any naked underage images and that prompting would be refused. That public statement is included in the complaint. Legal expert Even Alex Chandra, a partner at IGNOS Law Alliance, said, “When a system is intentionally designed to manipulate real images into sexualized content, the downstream abuse is not an anomaly—it is a foreseeable outcome.” Chandra’s comment is presented in the article as critical legal analysis of Grok’s design.
The lawsuit includes direct accusations against xAI and Musk, alleging the company profited from sexual predation. The complaint quotes: “xAI—and its founder Elon Musk—saw a business opportunity: an opportunity to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children.” It also quotes: “Knowing the type of harmful, illegal content that could—and would—be produced, xAI released Grok, a generative artificial intelligence model with image and video-making features that would respond to prompts to create sexual content with a person’s real image or video.” These quoted allegations appear in the plaintiffs’ filing.
Those elements are presented within the court filing. The complaint combines public statements, expert commentary, and direct quoted accusations from the plaintiffs. The filing places these materials alongside the plaintiffs’ legal claims.
The federal class action filed by three Tennessee minors is among the first lawsuits to hold an AI company liable for AI-generated child sexual abuse material involving identifiable minors. The complaint identifies Grok as the model at issue and places the case in the Northern District of California. Grok faces investigations across the U.S., the EU, the UK, France, Ireland, and Australia. The lawsuit and the multiple regulatory probes are reported alongside one another in coverage of the matter.
The filing and cross-jurisdictional investigations highlight legal and regulatory challenges faced by AI companies in controlling harmful outputs. The case presents a test of legal liability for AI-generated CSAM involving identifiable minors.
