One of the most horrific cases of allegedly Grok-generated child sex images was shared in a proposed class action lawsuit that was expanded Tuesday. Now, young girls not only accuse X and xAI of building toxic AI “nudify” tools but also of shielding child predators by obstructing police investigations into Grok-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM).
In March, a girl’s stepfather took his own life after cops discovered that he had used Grok to create 7,000 sexually explicit images using one photo taken when his stepdaughter was 11 years old, the amended complaint alleged.
Grok allowed the man to generate extreme images depicting incest and rape without flagging any harmful behavior, the complaint said. Seemingly, xAI’s child safety system only intervened after the man input a prompt for “gang rape.” That request sent a CyberTip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which alerted law enforcement to the AI CSAM.
Yet the harm was not stopped then, either. Despite mandatory reporting requirements to share information like a user’s IP address when CSAM is flagged, xAI repeatedly refused to help cops or NCMEC identify the user, the complaint alleged. For weeks, xAI allegedly “obstructed this investigation at every turn” and made it harder for “law enforcement efforts to locate, identify, and apprehend the perpetrator.”
Eventually, the stepfather was arrested after cops obtained a warrant to seize his devices. That’s when “a forensic review revealed approximately 7,000 AI-generated images and videos” depicting his stepdaughter, which were allegedly produced using Grok. Without Grok providing users with easy access to “undressing” capabilities, his family doubts he ever would have generated the harmful images, which he allegedly trafficked online in trade for “CSAM produced by other child sex predators.”
Two days after the man was released on bail, he shot himself, the complaint said, throwing the young girl—known as Jane Doe 4 in the complaint—into “a period of extreme personal crisis.” Among harms, she now suffers from anxiety and depression, as well as “struggles with suicidal thoughts.”
“Overnight, Jane Doe 4’s entire reality was shattered by the dual tragedies of child sexual exploitation and suicide,” the lawsuit alleged. “Her family was torn apart, and her life became a nightmare.”
xAI allegedly shielded predators
In a press release, the girls’ legal teams at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Baehr-Jones Law said that Jane Doe 4’s case is not an outlier. They noted that NCMEC found in early 2026 that 90 percent of xAI’s CyberTipline reports “were not actionable by law enforcement because xAI declined to include user information that would allow law enforcement to track and locate perpetrators.” As the lawyers explained:
“Jane Doe 4’s case shows how that pattern played out: xAI’s mandatory report to NCMEC included only the original, non-CSAM photograph, omitted every one of the AI-generated CSAM images, and failed to include the IP address where these images were created. Despite repeated requests from investigators for this location information that is critical for identifying and arresting perpetrators, xAI did not respond, stymieing the investigation for weeks.”
Allegedly, xAI avoids sharing this information to prioritize profits over child safety. In the press release, Jane Doe 4 accused X of going “silent” after Grok turned “a photo of me as a little girl sleeping on the couch, wearing an oversized panda pajama shirt” into “thousands of sexually explicit images of me—images so horrific I can’t even begin to describe them.”
“They had everything they needed to help law enforcement stop the person responsible and achieve justice. Instead, they remained silent and allowed this person to use Grok to steal my childhood,” Jane Doe 4 said. “This technology is a free, easily accessible weapon put into the hands of the worst people in the world. What is so dangerous is there is no way to prevent a predator from taking any photograph—not just a photograph on the internet—but any photo of a child and using this technology to create images from your worst nightmares. No one is safe—not adults, not children, not anyone.”
Another girl who came forward on Tuesday, Jane Doe 5, was also targeted by a known acquaintance, an adult family friend who similarly trafficked alleged Grok-generated images online. That girl was only notified after cops arrested the perpetrator and charged him with “extensive possession and distribution of CSAM content,” which was “limited to non-AI generated CSAM,” the complaint said.
Her mother blames xAI for Jane Doe 5’s abuse, saying that because of Grok, “my daughter is filled with anxiety and feels a complete lack of control over who has seen these images. No child should ever have to go through this.”
xAI founder Elon Musk has denied that Grok has ever been used to generate child sex images.
However, researchers have estimated that Grok’s lax safeguards—which allow users to make “spicy” requests to undress images—have harmed tens of thousands of kids without meaningful intervention. So far, xAI’s only action has been to charge for the feature, which the complaint alleged just ensures that xAI profits from all Grok-generated CSAM.
X and xAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.
Stability AI yanked into xAI fight
In addition to adding more victims to the complaint, lawyers also added Stability AI as a defendant.
According to the amended complaint, Stability AI’s open-weight models were trained on CSAM and allegedly “serve as the basis for third-party ‘nudify’ apps,” which Grok users supposedly rely on to further alter explicit Grok outputs.
Like X and xAI, Stability AI is accused of deliberately relaxing safeguards to seize a market by allowing generations of not-safe-for-work (NSFW) content. The lawsuit alleged that “on information and belief,” prior safeguards preventing NSFW outputs were removed after Stability AI’s model usage declined due to user complaints that the model got too prude.
It seems that after the lawsuit was initially filed, cops discovered that two perpetrators targeting minors suing had apps on their phones relying on “Stability AI’s image-producing tools.” The complaint was therefore amended to allege that some perpetrators may have used either Grok or Stability AI-linked tools, or possibly both.
Because so many nudifying apps rely on Stability AI’s models, the lawsuit alleged that “absent Stability’s models, the derivative applications would not exist in their current form and would not possess the image- and video-generation capabilities that enable the creation of CSAM.” To back their claims, the amended complaint cited a June report where researchers found that the “Stable Diffusion family is the primary driver of image-based nudification” online and accounts for 42.7 percent of such images.
Stability AI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.
Thousands of victims may join suit
Since Stability AI has been added as a defendant, the lawsuit now seeks to cover two classes, one class for each tech company, as well as Tennessee subclasses for each class.
The xAI class covers all US persons whose “real images of themselves as minors” were altered using Grok “to produce images or videos of sexually explicit conduct or content with their faces and/or other distinguishing features reasonably identifiable.” And the Stability AI class includes US persons similarly harmed using “an app built upon a Stability AI model.”
Lawyers estimate that thousands of minors may be eligible to join the classes and continue to seek out victims harmed by AI CSAM.
NCMEC did not respond to Ars’ request to comment.
However, the group has called for platforms, lawmakers, child safety organizations, and law enforcement to work together to address the “growing urgency for coordinated action.”
In March, NCMEC warned of a “sharp rise” in “reports related to generative AI” (GAI) in 2025. According to NCMEC, more than 1.5 million CyberTipline reports were made last year, “indicating a nexus to GAI and child sexual exploitation.” Troublingly, in more than 133,000 cases, NCMEC “lacked sufficient information to determine how the technology was used.”
That report did not call out X or xAI, but it did suggest that it’s likely common for AI firms to avoid sharing information on AI CSAM that cops can use to make arrests. For another example, NCMEC noted that Amazon AI services submitted the vast majority of tips (1.1 million), and none of those tips gave “actionable information” that law enforcement could use to identify perpetrators.
As scrutiny on the harm inflicted on children by AI firms intensifies, advocates are hoping that firms will fine-tune models to block all nudity. Girls suing X alleged that’s the only remedy, “because if you have a model that allows for any sexual or abusive content, it is impossible to prevent that model from creating such content involving minors.”
In the press release, one of the lawyers representing minors, Annika K. Martin, slammed xAI and Stability AI as allegedly knowingly building models “capable of producing deepfake CSAM,” with “complete disregard for the devastation they knew would follow.”
“AI-generated CSAM is a scourge on society that touches every community and every demographic,” Martin said. “The scale of harm is staggering, and the companies whose products enable it must be held accountable.”
