Elon Musk's AI company seeks to block Minnesota ban on AI 'nudification' technology

Sarah Nelson, Star Tribune on Jul 28, 2026

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Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI has challenged a Minnesota law banning apps that digitally alter photos of clothed people to make them appear nude before the law takes effect Aug. 1.

In a complaint filed Monday in Minnesota federal court, xAI argues that the provision is a “clumsy attempt to prohibit nudification” by imposing an “overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression.” The complaint said the law violates First Amendment protections and exposes people using free speech to civil liability and government sanctions.

Minnesota this year passed the country’s first ban on nudification technology, which allows users to manipulate photographs of fully-clothed people using AI to make them appear nude or create deepfake pornographic images and videos. The law calls for a $500,000 fine per violation and allows victims to sue the owners of tech apps for damages.

While nearly every state has laws banning deepfakes or other nonconsensual AI-generated sexual images, Minnesota’s law is unique because it holds AI companies liable for the creation of nudification images on their platforms, according to Ashley Casovan, the managing director of the IAPP AI Governance Center.

xAI’s complaint argues that the company already prohibits users from generating nude or sexualized images of people without their consent and has sued people individually who have skirted its technological guardrails. The startup recently sued a South Carolina man charged with sexually exploiting minors on allegations that he misused the company’s AI system to create child sexual abuse images, according to Reuters.

The company says it does not contest the purpose behind Minnesota’s law in prohibiting AI-generated images of people, but said Minnesota’s provision goes far beyond that and carries severe penalties “regardless of how many mitigations the provider has in place, and regardless of how diligently the provider polices such conduct using its tool.”

“There is no safe harbor for good-faith efforts of the provider of general-purpose AI creative tools to avoid harms,” the complaint reads.

The complaint argues that as a result of the law, xAI will have to restrict the image-editing features for Grok Imagine, the company’s AI image generator, once the statute goes into effect.

“Protected speech freely available before the law takes effect will thus be chilled,” the complaint reads.

The lawsuit names Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison as a defendant. It asks the court to declare the law unconstitutional and permanently block the state from enforcing the law or at a minimum, from enforcing the rules against xAI.

In a statement to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Ellison said the office is waiting to be served the lawsuit but “using AI to generate nude images of people against their will is appalling.”

“There are plenty of worthy debates to have about AI policy. This is not one of them,” Ellison’s statement said. “AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and can cause immense harm on an emotional, personal, and professional level.”

Images manipulated with artificial intelligence to make a person appear nude, or even create child pornography, continue to flood the internet as the technology evolves at breakneck speed. Halfway through 2025, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported receiving 440,419 cyber tips related to child sex abuse images created using artificial intelligence, compared with the 6,835 tips the center received in the same time frame in 2024.

In Minnesota federal court, a former employee of the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale and Stillwater school districts earlier this year pleaded guilty to child pornography charged for taking photos of children and using AI to manipulate the photos into abusive content.

When the bill cleared the Senate in a 65-0 vote, State Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, said she brought the legislation forward in 2025 after being approached by a group of women who said a man had taken their pictures from social media and personal photo albums and used AI to make sexual images of more than 80 women.

State Rep. Jess Hanson, DFL-Burnsville and House author of the bill, called the lawsuit “absolutely disgusting” in a prepared statement. She called nudification one of the most urgent issues to address when it comes to harms by AI.

“I look forward to hearing Elon Musk trying to explain to the public exactly the redeeming qualities he thinks nudification has and why it’s important for him to undermine these critical protections,” his statement said.

Musk’s social media platform X sued Minnesota last year over a 2023 law that made it a crime to share deepfake information to influence an election, raising similar arguments that it violated constitutional protections for free speech. The lawsuit is on hold as the matter is debated in federal appeals court.

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