Musk's xAI accused of using child porn to train Grok
What's the story
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, is facing a lawsuit for allegedly using child sex abuse materials (CSAM) to train its Grok models. The complaint was filed by a plaintiff identified as Jane Doe, who claims that her images were used in the process. This case marks the first time xAI has been accused of such an act.
Re-traumatization
Doe was informed by CCCP about AI CSAM featuring her
Doe, a victim of repeated sexual abuse in her preschool years, was notified by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP) that AI-generated CSAM featuring her had been found on xAI.
This news re-traumatized her as messages on online forums were found where offenders were discussing creating similar AI-generated CSAM of her and other known victims.
Training fears
Doe believes Grok has been trained on her images
Doe is concerned that xAI has not only facilitated the creation of more abusive images from her traumatic past but also stored the ones generated by Grok to further train it.
She believes that Grok has been trained on both the original images that have haunted her for over two decades and these new AI-generated ones.
Dataset controversy
Images were part of a CSAM hash list
The lawsuit alleges that Doe's images were part of a CSAM Hash List maintained by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
It further claims that "that same material" was used in the dataset xAI employed to develop Grok's image and video-generating capabilities.
The complaint only alleged that "CSAM depicting Plaintiff with its longstanding well-known hash values has been used as a part of the dataset used by xAI."
Policy loophole
Lawsuit highlights potential loophole in Grok's terms
The lawsuit also highlights a potential loophole in Grok's terms, which treat public X posts and Grok's own outputs as training data by default.
This means that publicly posting an image not only exposes it to viewers but also feeds it directly into the pipeline xAI uses to train its model and generate further images.
Legal action
If Doe wins, xAI could owe monetary damages to victims
In her proposed class action, Doe seeks to end Grok's harmful outputs.
The lawsuit accuses xAI of violating federal child pornography laws and Masha's Law, both of which allow CSAM survivors to sue for production, possession, and distribution.
If Doe wins, xAI could owe monetary damages to every victim who can prove that Grok generated CSAM based on their real photos.