xAI Sues Grok User Over Sexual Deepfakes

xAI has sued a Grok user accused of creating child sexual abuse material and non-consensual sexual imagery, even as the company faces criticism that its chatbot was marketed with few meaningful restrictions on sexualized content.

According to Reuters, xAI filed the lawsuit this week in federal court in Texas against Terry Wayne Harwood, a Grok user from South Carolina. The company accuses Harwood of repeatedly violating its terms of service and acceptable-use policy.

“His repeated, deliberate, and unconscionable violations of the xAI Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy through his abhorrent abuse of Plaintiff’s generative AI chatbot known as 'Grok.'”

Reuters reports that Harwood was arrested in February. He could not be reached for comment.

xAI’s safeguards and reported abuse

The lawsuit describes Grok as a “neutral tool, subject to user control,” placing responsibility for illegal activity on users. It also says xAI reported child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) 73,604 times in 2026, leading to the arrests of at least 244 individuals.

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Grok’s policies prohibit:

• “Undressing or nudifying real persons, or otherwise altering a real person’s image or likeness to depict them in an intimate or sexual context”
• “Depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner”

Those restrictions followed a period when X users could use Grok’s “spicy mode” to undress people. A Gizmodo test in August 2025 found that the chatbot was easier to prompt into undressing women than men. Users also reportedly created inappropriate images of children in late 2025.

In January, members of the UK government threatened X with fines or a ban over its ability to generate non-consensual sexual images. Elon Musk dismissed the criticism at the time, saying, “They just want to suppress free speech.”

The lawsuit promotes xAI’s “technological safeguards” against illegal and harmful content, but the company’s earlier product positioning has made that defense difficult to separate from the criticism. When Grok launched, Musk promoted anime characters that could become “digital dancing bunnies,” and later deleted at least one sexualized video he posted in 2025, although archiving sites preserved it.

“Defendant’s actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage.”

Users complain about stricter moderation

The backlash has not come only from regulators. Posts on the Grok subreddit include users complaining that the chatbot no longer produces the sexual images they expected. Gizmodo also filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking complaints about Grok submitted to the Federal Trade Commission.

One complaint objected to being unable to create “100% explicit and 100% uncensored AdvancedAI Deepfakes on GrokAI,” while insisting the user did not want to abuse the system. Another user from Minnesota said identical prompts and source images that had previously generated videos were moderated every time after Grok’s policies changed.

The lawsuit’s central tension is clear: xAI says users must control how Grok is used, while earlier promotion and product behavior helped establish expectations for sexually explicit image generation.