New York: Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s 14 children, has filed a lawsuit against Musk-owned artificial intelligence company xAI, alleging that its chatbot Grok was used to generate explicit and abusive images of her without consent.
According to the lawsuit, one of the AI-generated images depicted St. Clair — who is Jewish — stripped and dressed in a string bikini covered with swastikas (hakenkreuz). The complaint describes the imagery as degrading, anti-Semitic, and a form of AI-enabled revenge porn.
Claims of Targeted Harassment Using AI
St. Clair, who became estranged from Musk after the birth of their child in 2024, alleged that users sympathetic to the billionaire exploited Grok’s image-generation features to harass her.
She also claimed that Grok was used to digitally undress an image of her taken when she was a child, escalating the seriousness of the allegations.
“xAI is not a reasonably safe product. Nobody has borne the brunt more than Ashley St. Clair,” her attorney, Carrie Goldberg, told Newsweek.
“Ashley filed suit because Grok was harassing her by creating and distributing non-consensual, abusive, and degrading images of her and publishing them on X.”
Loss of X Premium Privileges
St. Clair further alleged that after publicly calling out the Grok chatbot for generating sexualised images of her, her X Premium privileges were revoked, including her verified checkmark and monetisation access.
“They took my checkmark and cancelled my Twitter premium lmao,” she wrote on X, noting that she had paid for an annual premium subscription in August last year.
Public Revelation of Relationship With Musk
In February last year, St. Clair publicly stated that Musk was the father of her child. The conservative activist said she had kept the birth private for five months to protect the child’s privacy and safety.
She also claimed that Musk first contacted her via direct messages in May 2023, and that the two met later that month when her employer, Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon, interviewed Musk in person.
Grok Under Global Scrutiny
The lawsuit comes amid growing international scrutiny of Grok’s image-generation tools, particularly its controversial “Spicy Mode”, which critics say allowed users to create sexualised deepfakes of women and minors using simple prompts such as “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes”.
As backlash intensified, X announced on January 14 that it would geoblock image-editing capabilities in jurisdictions where such content violates local laws.
“We have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis,” X’s safety team said in a statement.
Broader Debate on AI Safety and Consent
The case has renewed debate over AI accountability, consent, and platform responsibility, with critics warning that rapid deployment of generative AI tools without adequate safeguards can enable abuse at scale.