Ashley St Clair, a 27-year-old conservative influencer, is a longtime darling of the MAGA world. In her early 20s, she dropped out of college and became an outspoken advocate for right-wing causes, including anti-transgender activism. Five years later, she had a child with Elon Musk, a man she is currently fighting in a federal lawsuit in New York. courtroom.
Earlier this month, St Clair filed a lawsuit against Musk’s AI company in response to a flood of deepfakes made by xAI’s Grok chatbot and shared on Xthe social media platform that Musk owns. She said Fortuneearlier in January, X users were shooting images on his X profile in sexualized images generated by AI of her, including some she claimed represented her as a minor.
“There were photos of me with nothing covering me other than a piece of dental floss with my toddler’s backpack in the background and photos of me where it looked like I wasn’t wearing a top at all,” she said. “I felt so disgusted and violated.”
The dispute between St Clair and Many users discovered that they could tag Grok on the X platform and ask him to edit user profile pictures. According to research from Digital Hate Centerover an 11-day period, from December 29, 2025 to January 8, 2026, Grok generated approximately 3 million sexualized images.
In the lawsuit, St Clair, who is Jewish, also claims the AI chatbot generated an image that put her “in a string bikini covered in swastikas.” The more St Clair talked about the problem, she said, the more she was targeted by the images.
The legal battle quickly became unpleasant. After being informed of the action, Elon Musk’s company almost immediately filed suit against the conservative influencer, accusing her of violating the platform’s terms of service, which state that any dispute with X must be brought in Texas. Representatives for Musk did not respond to specific questions from Fortune.
Musk has we generally prefer to fight his legal battles in Texas. In 2024, X updated its terms of service to require that all federal lawsuits against the company be filed in the Northern District of Texas, although its headquarters is in Bastrop, which falls under the Western District of Texas.
Musk and the company have not explained the reasons for this stipulation. But 10 of the Northern District’s 11 active judges were appointed by Republican presidents and, unlike most federal courts, the district assigns cases based on the division in which they are filed rather than by random assignment. Ethics experts have also raised potential conflict of interest concerns because Judge Reed O’Connor, who has overseen several trials involving Musk’s X platform, owns Tesla action. O’Connor has sometimes refused to recuse himself, although he at least once withdrew after his assets came under scrutiny.
“It’s really ridiculous,” St Clair said of the countersuit, arguing that X’s terms of service don’t apply since she’s suing over images created of her without her consent, not her own use of the platform.
St Clair says she is now trying to fight the countersuit, block any change of venue in Texas, and fight to establish greater accountability for generative AI platforms.
“It’s about holding these platforms accountable and these brand new generative AI tools accountable when they are launched, without any regard for the damage that they have caused, damage that was entirely predictable,” she said. “I will never be able to get out of my head the images not only of myself, but also of other people’s children and wives, that I must have seen.”
xAI released a chatbot update earlier this month and claimed that Grok’s X account was no longer allowed to edit images of real people wearing revealing clothing. St Clair says users have found workarounds, including using the standalone Grok app, and the images are still being distributed. on the X platform.
“This is still happening. People can still produce these images on the standalone Grok app and website,” she said. “There are also images of me being burned that are produced. Yet provocative images of me are produced. It has not stopped.”
The European non-profit organization AI Forensics I discovered that Grok still generated sexualized images of individuals despite X’s restrictions. Researchers found that users circumvented the ban by accessing Grok directly through its website rather than through X, or by using Grok Imagine, the AI’s video and image generation tool.
St Clair has faced the consequences of her fight with xAI and Musk: comments on X regularly accuse her of being a vindictive ex-girlfriend who is after Musk’s money; she was stripped of her “verified” status on X and the advertising revenue sharing system that accompanied it; and, in a now-deleted X-rated post, Musk even threatened to sue for full custody of their child after St Clair made comments expressing regret for his previous stance on trans rights.
Grok triggered global regulatory oversight
X’s “nudifying” trend that targeted St Clair has sparked global concern in part because of the proliferation of sexualized images of children. According to research from Digital Hate Centerof the 3 million sexualized images produced by Grok during period 11, 23,000 appeared to depict children, reflecting an estimated average rate of a new sexualized image of a minor every 41 seconds. These included a selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl who was “undressed” by Grok, and an image of six girls wearing micro bikinis, generated by Grok.
“It’s really hard not to conclude that this is a disaster of [Elon Musk’s] own manufacturing,” said Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Fortune. “Musk was very clear that in his own personal messages, he was mocking people concerned about how he was being used, and seemed to be taking it lightly, rather than taking it seriously and seeking to remedy the situation for almost two weeks.”
Grok also faces a class action lawsuit in California over sexualized deepfakes, as well as a formal investigation by the European Commission. If X is found to have breached the EU’s Digital Services Act, the company could face fines of up to 6% of its global annual turnover.
“The EU’s actions are fantastic. I think it’s definitely a step in the right direction, and I hope more people and leaders will follow,” St Clair said. The Trump administration has taken numerous steps against what it sees as European “censorship” and has a particular problem with the Digital Services Act. In one of the administration’s most dramatic moves in December, banned to five European nationals, including Ahmed, to enter the United States, for allegedly pressuring tech companies to censor American views.
On Monday, the European regulator said it would assess whether “manipulated sexually explicit images” generated by Grok had been shown to users on the block, and warned it could “impose interim measures” if X refuses to implement significant adjustments. Similar investigations are underway in Australia, France and Germany, while X has been temporarily banned in Indonesia and Malaysia.
“AI platforms do not have the same litigation protections as social media companies, and this is an important test of whether or not the Negligence Act and the Rapid Design Act can be applied to AI platforms,” Ahmed said. “If they are found to be responsible, it will likely change the AI chatbot industry forever.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
