Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison argued in a court filing on Friday that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, should not be allowed to halt the state’s ban on AI-generated "nudification." The state maintains that the law, which is the first of its kind in the United States, is narrowly tailored and likely to survive a constitutional challenge.
The legal dispute follows a lawsuit filed by xAI in July, which contends that the Minnesota law violates the First Amendment by restricting protected expressive activity. The law, which officially took effect on August 1, prohibits website operators and software developers from allowing users to create realistic images depicting intimate body parts that were not present in the original photograph of an identifiable individual.
In its legal challenge, xAI argued that the law is overly broad and lacks exceptions for artistic, scientific, political, or satirical works. The company stated the measure could apply to "benign images" of people in shorts, men without shirts, or competitive swimmers. Minnesota officials, however, stated the measure was adopted this year to address the generation of child sexual abuse material by AI products.
At the scale of the technology industry, this case sets a precedent for how states may regulate "nudification" tools. xAI, which operates the Grok AI chatbot, is currently facing multiple lawsuits, including one from the city of Baltimore and another from minors in Tennessee, over the creation of sexualized deepfakes. The company itself has also begun suing its own users who it alleges are bypassing technological safeguards to create non-consensual sexual images.
The immediate day-to-day impact for platform operators involves the requirement to maintain technological blockers that prevent the creation of these specific types of images. If the law remains in effect, developers must ensure their software cannot be used to add intimate body parts to existing photos of real people. A hearing to consider xAI's request for a preliminary injunction, which would temporarily stop the law's enforcement, is scheduled for Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank.