A federal judge rejected xAI's emergency effort to halt Minnesota's ban on AI nudification technology on Friday, allowing the first-of-its-kind state measure to take effect on August 1. The decision leaves Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company to continue its constitutional challenge while complying with the law during the case.
Minnesota's statute bars owners or operators of websites, applications and software from letting users create realistic altered images or videos that depict the intimate parts of identifiable people. It also prohibits advertising or promoting services that perform that function, while exempting tools that require substantial individualized technical or artistic skill from a human user.
The official session law authorizes the state attorney general to seek civil penalties of as much as $500,000 for each unlawful access, download or use. A person depicted in prohibited material may also sue for compensation, punitive damages, legal costs and an injunction. Money recovered through state penalties is designated for organizations serving victims of sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and other crimes.
xAI filed a 38-page federal lawsuit before the effective date, arguing that the measure is an overly broad restriction on protected expression. According to the Associated Press, the company said the statute lacks a safe harbor for providers that make good-faith efforts to prevent abuse and can cover consensual or self-created material. The company did not dispute Minnesota's interest in stopping non-consensual synthetic nude images.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison defended the measure as a response to technology that can strip targets of dignity and cause emotional, personal and professional harm. xAI says its terms prohibit illegal, harmful or abusive uses of Grok, including privacy-violating image alterations, and that it can suspend accounts and report suspected child sexual abuse material.
The ruling concerns temporary relief rather than the final merits of xAI's constitutional claims, so the litigation will continue. Its outcome could influence how other US states regulate generative-image services and whether responsibility rests mainly with users who make abusive deepfakes or also with the technology providers that enable their creation.
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