Baltimore sues Elon Musk’s xAI over Grok’s explicit AI images: Report

Baltimore city with a population of 568,000 has taken legal action against Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, accusing it of allowing harmful content through its Grok chatbot. According to a Reuters report, the city has filed a lawsuit on Tuesday (March 24), claiming that Grok can generate non-consensual sexually explicit images, including those involving children. Officials said Baltimore is the largest city so far to sue xAI over such “deepfake” content linked to the chatbot.In its complaint filed in a local court, Baltimore said xAI misled users by promoting Grok as a safe, general-purpose AI tool. The city alleged that instead, the chatbot has been widely used to create and spread objectionable content on Musk’s social media platform XAccording to the lawsuit, millions of such images were generated in a short period earlier this year, including thousands involving minors. The city said this raises serious concerns around safety, privacy and misuse of AI technology.Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said the issue goes beyond technology. He added that such tools could enable the exploitation of children and must be addressed urgently. “We’re talking about tech companies enabling the sexual exploitation of children. It's a threat to privacy, dignity and public safety, and those responsible must be held accountable,” Scott said as quoted in the Reuters report. The case comes as xAI faces scrutiny in several countries including America, Europe, Asia and in Australia over how Grok handles content. It then said that it has restricted image editing in Grok, and blocked users from generating images of people in revealing ⁠clothing in "jurisdictions where it's illegal."xAI CEO Elon Musk then said he was "not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero."