Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI should not be allowed to halt the state's ban on AI "nudification," telling a judge xAI's lawsuit challenging the ban is misguided and likely to fail.
Ellison, a Democrat, said in a court filing on Friday in Minnesota that the law, the nation’s first so-called nudification ban, was narrowly tailored and that xAI was unlikely to succeed in its constitutional challenge.
The law, which took effect on August 1, prohibits website operators, software developers and others from allowing users to create realistic images depicting an intimate body part that is not shown in an original photo of an identifiable individual.
xAI sued Minnesota in July, arguing the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by restricting protected expressive activity.
Minnesota’s attorney general's office and xAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank in St. Paul, Minnesota, will consider xAI’s bid for an order preliminarily halting the law at a hearing on Wednesday.
Frank last month turned down an earlier bid from Musk to stop the law from taking effect but agreed to fast-track his review of the measure.
Musk’s Grok AI chatbot has faced mounting criticism over its creation of sexually explicit content. Regulators have sought stronger safeguards and imposed bans to help curb the spread of artificially created illegal material.
xAI has begun suing users whom it alleges are evading Grok’s technological blockers to create sexual images of people without their consent.
In its lawsuit, xAI contends Minnesota law is overly broad and contains “no exception for images of artistic, scientific, political, satirical, educational, medical, or religious significance.”
xAI said the law covers “benign images of people in shorts (inner thigh), men without shirts (breast), and competitive swimmers (buttocks and breast).” The penalty is up to $500,000 for each violation.
Minnesota said it adopted the measure this year to combat the spread of what it called a “staggering amount (of) child sexual abuse material that AI products like Grok Imagine generate.”
The state’s filing pointed to testimony from victims whose photographs were used to create fake pornographic images. The attorney general argued the law regulates a technological tool and not protected speech.
The case is X.AI LLC v. Keith Ellison, U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota, 26-cv-03425-DWF-DTS.
For xAI: Robert Dunn of Eimer Stahl and Todd Noteboom of Stinson
For Minnesota: Peter Farrell and Janine Kimble of the state attorney general’s office
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