Mother of Musk’s child sues his AI startup over sexual deepfakes

Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s children, has filed a lawsuit against his artificial intelligence company, alleging that its Grok chatbot enabled users to create sexually exploitive deepfake images of her, resulting in humiliation and emotional suffering.

St. Clair, 27, who identifies herself as a writer and political strategist, brought the suit on January 15 in New York City against xAI. She claims that the fabricated images included a fully clothed photograph of her at age 14 that had been digitally altered to depict her in a bikini, as well as images depicting her as an adult in sexualized poses and wearing a bikini decorated with swastikas. St. Clair is Jewish. Grok operates on Musk’s social platform X.

Earlier in the week, after widespread global criticism over sexualized images involving women and minors, X announced that Grok would no longer be able to modify photos to depict real individuals in revealing clothing where such actions are illegal.

When asked about the lawsuit and its claims, xAI responded with a brief statement: “Legacy Media Lies.”

According to St. Clair, she notified X about the deepfake images when they first surfaced last year and requested their removal. She says the platform initially replied that the images did not violate existing policies. Later, she says, X assured her that images of her would not be used or altered without her permission.

St. Clair contends that afterwards, the platform retaliated against her by revoking her premium subscription and verification badge, preventing her from monetising her account — which has one million followers — while continuing to allow degrading, manipulated images of her to circulate.

St. Clair is the mother of Musk’s 16-month-old son, Romulus. She resides in New York City, where she filed the lawsuit in the state Supreme Court. She is seeking unspecified monetary damages for alleged emotional distress and other harms, along with immediate court orders prohibiting xAI from enabling further deepfake content involving her.

In its January 14 statement, X said it was introducing additional safeguards for Grok, such as restricting image generation and editing to paid accounts in an effort to improve accountability. The company reiterated that it has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content, and said it would remove such material immediately and report any accounts distributing child sexual abuse content to law enforcement.

By Tamilla Hasanova