Landmark Ruling
A Dutch court has banned Elon Musk's xAI from generating and distributing nude images of people without their consent. The Amsterdam District Court ruled Thursday that xAI's Grok AI tool and the X platform that hosts it are barred from creating or sharing sexual imagery featuring people "partially or wholly stripped naked without having given their explicit permission."
Penalties for Noncompliance
xAI faces fines of 100,000 euros ($115,350) per day for noncompliance. This civil suit marks one of the first times a judge has weighed in on xAI's responsibility for AI tools that can create sexualized images.
Rise in Complaints
The ruling comes amid a surge of complaints and investigations into Grok in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Grok was launched by Musk in 2023 and distributed through his social media platform X, which is now part of his rocket and space exploration company SpaceX.
Legal Action
Offlimits, a Dutch center monitoring online violence, initiated legal action in cooperation with the non-profit Victims Support Fund. The legal action targeted a Grok feature that allowed users to create hyper-realistic deepfake montages of naked women and children using real photos.
xAI's Defense
At a hearing this month, xAI lawyers argued it was impossible to guarantee that abuse on its platform could be prevented. They said the company should not be punished for the actions of malicious users. xAI claimed to have taken measures in January to prevent Grok from editing images of real people in revealing clothing, including restricting its image creation features to paid subscribers.
Court's Rejection
The court website stated that Offlimits managed to produce a video of a nude person using Grok shortly before the hearing. The judge decided that Offlimits had shown there was reasonable doubt over the effectiveness of the measures taken to date.
Offlimits' Response
Offlimits director Robbert Hoving said the "burden is on the company" to ensure its tools are not used to create and distribute nonconsensual sexual images, including of children.
European Parliament Action
Earlier on Thursday, the European Parliament approved a ban on artificial intelligence systems generating sexualized deepfakes.
