xAI sues user for exploiting AI tool to sexualise minors

Lawsuit accuses Terry Harwood of misusing xAI to bypass safeguards and produce explicit deepfakes involving minors

Elon Musk’s xAI has filed a lawsuit against a South Carolina man who was arrested earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting minors, alleging that he misused the company’s AI tool to create sexually explicit content involving a child.

The lawsuit, filed in a Texas federal court on Tuesday, alleges that Terry Harwood knowingly violated the company’s terms of service to create the material.

“[The] Defendant opened multiple xAI accounts using false identities. Despite expressly agreeing to abide by the xAI Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy, Defendant designed misleading prompts to circumvent Grok’s built-in safeguards and then abused the tool to convert non-sexual photographs into sexually explicit images without the photograph subjects’ knowledge or consent,” the ۱۲-page complaint said.

The suit alleges that Harwood uploaded images of both adults and minors that were not sexual in nature and then tried to create so-called “deepfakes” that sexualised them.

“A review of Defendant’s xAI accounts further shows that on numerous occasions during the Relevant Period, Defendant submitted prompts to Grok to alter such images to sexualize the subjects of the images, which Grok responded to by refusing to follow the prompts on the basis that such material violated Grok’s content moderation guardrails,” the complaint added.

“In response, Defendant repeatedly submitted further prompts, with alterations, in an effort to circumvent Grok’s moderation efforts.”

xAI is also seeking monetary damages, although the case did not specify a dollar amount, as well as a court order permanently banning Harwood from using the platform, which has more than ۲.۶ million users.

The suit is the first brought by an AI company against one of its users and comes amid intense scrutiny of xAI around the world for allowing users to create this kind of content on the platform in the first place.

Grok has been under the spotlight in Washington, been in the crosshairs of European regulators, and faced bans in both Malaysia and Indonesia regarding sexually explicit content that can be created on the platform.

Earlier this year, Musk pushed back on allegations that Grok produced AI-generated sexualised images of children, especially nude images.

“I [am] not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero,” Musk said in an X post in January.

xAI’s complaint said that the company “enforces its rules against violators through account suspensions, account terminations, and by reporting suspected child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.”

The complaint points out that the platform had suspended more than ۵۲,۰۰۰ accounts and made more than ۷۳,۰۰۰ complaints to the organisation, which resulted in nearly ۲۵۰ arrests in ۲۰۲۶ alone.