Earlier this month, St Clair filed a lawsuit against Musk’s AI company in response to the flood of deepfakes created by xAI’s chatbot Grok and shared by Xthe social media platform owned by Musk. He told luck it was as early as January that X users were transferring photos of his X profile to sexualized AI-generated images to him, including some he said described him as a minor.

“There are photos of me with nothing covered but a piece of floss with my toddler’s backpack in the background and photos of me where it looks like I’m not wearing a top at all,” she said. “I feel angry and violated.”

The dispute between St Clair and X is just one part of a wider wave of anger and backlash after xAI’s Grok AI model was used for a widespread, non-consensual “digital undressing” campaign that began in late December. Many users have discovered that they can tag Grok on the X platform and ask it to edit images from users’ profiles. According to research from Center for Combating Digital Hatein 11 days—from December 29, 2025, to January 8, 2026—Grok generated approximately 3 million sexual images.

In the suit, St Clair, who is Jewish, also said the AI ​​chatbot generated an image that put her “in a string bikini covered in swastikas.” The more St Clair talked about the issue, he said, the more the images drew him in.

The legal battle quickly turned ugly. After the action was announced, Musk’s company almost immediately counter-sued the conservative influencer, accusing him of violating the platform’s terms of service, saying that any disputes with X should be brought to Texas. Representatives for Musk did not respond to specific questions from luck.

Musk has usually preferred to fight his legal battles in Texas. In 2024, X updated its terms of service to require that all federal lawsuits against the company filed in the Northern District of Texas, although its headquarters are in Bastrop, which is under the Western District of Texas.

Musk and the company did not state their reasons for that stipulation. But 10 of the 11 active Northern District judges were appointed by Republican presidents, and unlike most federal courts, the district assigns cases based on which division they are filed in rather than by random assignment. Ethics experts have also raised potential conflict-of-interest concerns because Judge Reed O’Connor, who has presided over several cases involving Musk’s platform X, has Tesla stock. O’Connor sometimes refused to recuse himself, although he did at least once recuse himself after his assets were inspected.

“It’s really ridiculous,” St Clair said of the countersuit, arguing that X’s terms of service don’t apply because he’s suing over images made of him without his permission, not his own use of the platform.

St Clair said he is now trying to fight the counter-suit, block any changes to the Texas venue, and fight to establish more accountability from generative AI platforms.

“It’s about holding these platforms accountable and holding these very new generative AI tools accountable when they’re launched without regard for the damage they’ve done, damage that’s completely visible,” he said. “I can’t get the images not only of myself, but of other people’s children and other women that I have to see out of my head.”

xAI released an update to the chatbot earlier this month and admitted that Grok’s X account is no longer allowed to edit images of real people in revealing clothing. St Clair said users have found workarounds, including using the standalone Grok app, and the images are still being distributed. on the X platform.

“It’s still happening. People can still create these images on the standalone Grok app and website,” he said. “There were also burning images of me that were made. However, offensive images of me were made. It didn’t stop.”

European non-profit, AI Forensics, too found that Grok Still making sexual images of individuals despite X’s restrictions. Researchers found users violating the ban by accessing Grok directly through its website rather than X, or by using Grok Imagine, the AI ​​video and image creation tool.

St Clair is facing blowback from her fight with xAI and Musk: X’s comments often accuse her of being a vindictive ex-girlfriend looking for Musk’s money; stripped him of his “verified” status with X and the ad-revenue sharing scheme that came with it; and, in a now-deleted post on X, Musk even threatened to sue for full custody of their child after St Clair made comments expressing regret for her past stance on trans rights.

Grok has sparked global regulatory scrutiny

The “stripping” X trend targeting St Clair has sparked global concern in part due to the proliferation of sexual images of children. According to research from Center for Combating Digital Hateof the 3 million sexualized images produced by Grok in the 11-period, 23,000 appeared to depict children, indicating an approximately average rate of a new sexualized image of a minor every 41 seconds. These include a selfie uploaded by a student “undressed” by Grok, and an image of six girls wearing micro bikinis, created by Grok.

“It’s hard not to conclude that this is a disaster of (Elon Musk’s) own making,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Good luck. “Musk is very clear that in his own personal postings, he mocks people who are concerned about how it was abused, and seems to make light of it, instead of taking it seriously and trying to resolve the situation for almost two weeks.”

Grok is also facing a California class action lawsuit over sexualized deepfakes, as well as a formal investigation by the EU Commission. If X is found to be in breach of the EU’s Digital Services Act, the company could face fines of up to 6% of its global annual revenue.

“The actions of the EU are amazing. I think it’s a step in the right direction, and I hope that more people and leaders will follow,” said St Clair. The Trump administration has taken several actions against what it considers “censorship” in Europe and has a particular issue with the Digital Services Act. In one of the administration’s more dramatic moves, it was in December banned five European nationals, including Ahmed, from entering the US, due to alleged pressure from tech companies to censor American views.

On Monday, the EU regulator said it will assess whether the “manipulative sexual images” created by Grok are shown to users in the bloc, and warned that it may “impose interim measures” if X refuses to implement meaningful changes. Similar investigations were conducted in Australia, France, and Germany, while X was temporarily banned in Indonesia and Malaysia.

“AI platforms do not have the same protection from litigation that social media companies do, and this is an important test of whether the law of negligence and the law of flexible design can be applied to AI platforms,” ​​Ahmed said. “If they are found liable, it will likely change the AI ​​chatbot industry forever.”