The logo of the artificial intelligence company xAI appears on the screen of a smartphone placed on a surface showing an abstract blue illustration.
Samuel Boivin | Null Photo | Getty Images
Lawsuits against Elon Musk’s xAI are piling up, with Baltimore City becoming the first major US city to file suit against the company over issues with its Grok image generator.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in an emailed statement to CNBC that Grok’s deepfakes “have a traumatic and lifelong impact on victims.”
“We are talking about technology companies that enable the sexual exploitation of children,” Scott wrote. “Our city will not remain silent about this situation. This is a threat to privacy, dignity, and public safety, and those responsible must be held accountable.”
xAI, which is now part of SpaceX after a merger last month, is facing regulatory investigations in several countries after Grok allowed the mass production of so-called deepfake pornography based on non-consensual images of women and children. Last week, lawyers representing three Tennessee teenagers filed a proposed class action lawsuit against xAI, accusing Grok of generating content depicting them in sexual and humiliating scenarios.
In the latest lawsuit, filed in Circuit Court on March 24, the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore accuse xAI of violating the city’s consumer protection law and engaging in deceptive and unfair trade practices, including advertising Grok and X, formerly known as Twitter, as generally safe for users.
The complaint references the “put your girlfriend in a bikini” trend, which encourages Grok users to take photos of other people and make them nude. Musk runs SpaceX and is also its CEO. teslajoined the trend by sharing an image created with Grok depicting him in a string bikini.
“Mr. Musk’s post served as a public endorsement of Grok’s ability to produce sexual or revealing edits of real people, and demonstrated to users that such use of Grok is acceptable, humorous, and encouraged,” the Baltimore lawyers in the complaint wrote. “As the owner and primary public face of both (xAI) and
The city is seeking the “highest legal fine,” but the complaint does not specify a specific amount. It’s also seeking “injunctive relief” to force Musk’s company to make changes to X and Grok to curb the creation of what researchers call non-consensual intimate images (NCII) and child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The City of Baltimore is asking the court to order X and xAI to “stop targeting and exploiting Baltimore residents, reform the design of their exploitative platforms” and review their marketing.
SpaceX and xAI executives did not respond to requests for comment.
The UK-based charity Internet Watch Foundation said in a report released on Tuesday that the overwhelming majority of CSAM targets remain girls, making up 97% of illegal AI-generated sexual images assessed by the organization in 2025.
Spotlight: SpaceX’s xAI acquisition deal
