Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has filed a federal lawsuit against Minnesota, challenging a pioneering state law that prohibits “nudify” apps capable of creating AI-powered fake, sexualized images of individuals.
CBS News reports that the lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court, targets legislation signed by Gov. Tim Walz (D) earlier this year that bans access to so-called nudification technology. The law, designated as HF 1606, is scheduled to take effect in August and represents the first state-level attempt to regulate this specific application of artificial intelligence.
Musk’s lawsuit contends that the statute violates First Amendment protections by imposing what xAI characterizes as an overly broad, content-based restriction on free speech and visual expression tools.
According to the civil complaint, xAI acknowledges Minnesota’s legitimate interest in preventing the distribution of AI-generated nude images of real people without their permission. However, the company argues the law overreaches its stated purpose and subjects a wide range of protected speech to potential civil liability and government penalties.
The legislation establishes mechanisms for both victims and the state attorney general’s office to pursue legal action against companies that provide nudify apps. Under the law’s provisions, xAI argues it would be held strictly liable regardless of whether the company prohibits users from employing the tool for nudification purposes or how many safeguards the provider implements to prevent such misuse.
The lawsuit also contests the law’s application in cases where the individuals depicted have consented to image creation, or when the resulting images possess artistic, scientific, political, satirical, educational, medical, or religious value. xAI further criticizes the legislation’s definition of intimate part as excessively broad, claiming it would ban depictions of shirtless men, people wearing shorts or swimsuits, and other images that extend far beyond what a reasonable person would consider nudification.
Central to xAI’s legal argument is the assertion that creating images and videos through its platform constitutes protected First Amendment activity, and that Minnesota’s anti-nudification law imposes undue burdens on both the company and its users’ freedom of expression rights.
In its filing, xAI requests that the court declare the Minnesota law unconstitutional and issue an injunction preventing the state from enforcing the legislation.
AI-generated deepfake pornography continues to be a major problem enabled by big tech giants like Google and Apple. Researchers recently discovered that AI platform Hugging Face has many services allowing users to create deepfake porn, including of children:
The models tested by AI Forensics did not identify themselves as nudifying services or tools designed for creating nonconsensual images. Instead, they marketed themselves as general-purpose image editing models. Researchers emphasized that they did not attempt to circumvent safety mechanisms or hack the systems, using only straightforward prompts.
“No safeguards at all are being implemented at a platform level. Only the developer can, if they want, implement some, and most of them do not,” says Bouchaud. “Hugging Face can easily filter what is coming in and coming out of a system.”
Leonie Oehmig, a researcher with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who studies deepfake image abuse, explains that many image generation models have been trained using sexual content from the internet. Without proper safety mechanisms, these models can easily create explicit content. Some platforms openly advertise these capabilities, while others appear more innocent while still offering undressing and face-swapping functions.
Elon Musk brags about the potential AI holds for the future, but for every potential benefit, there is a landmine, like perverts harnessing AI to produce child pornography. Breitbart News social media director Wynton Hall has written his instant bestseller Code Red: The Left, the Right, China, and the Race to Control AI to serve as the definitive guide on how the MAGA movement can create positions on AI that benefit humanity without handing control of our nation to the leftists of Silicon Valley or allowing the Chinese to take over the world.
Read more at CBS News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.