By Micah Jonah
January 17, 2026
The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children has filed a lawsuit against his artificial intelligence company, xAI, accusing its Grok chatbot of enabling the creation of sexually exploitative deepfake images of her that caused humiliation and emotional distress.
The suit was filed in New York on Thursday by Ashley St Clair, a writer and political commentator – the mother of Musk’s 16 month old son, Romulus. She alleges that Grok allowed users to generate nonconsensual sexualized images of her, which were widely shared online.
The legal action came shortly before California Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a cease and desist letter to xAI, demanding the company halt the creation and distribution of Grok generated sexualised deepfake imagery. Bonta said the volume of reports involving explicit images of women and children was alarming and potentially illegal.
St Clair said she reported the fake images to Musk’s social media platform X, which hosts Grok, after they began circulating last year and requested that they be taken down. According to her filing, the platform initially said the images did not violate its policies, later promised to prevent further use of her likeness, but then removed her premium subscription and verification badge while the images continued to circulate.
In court documents, St Clair said she has suffered serious emotional harm and ongoing mental distress as a result of the continued creation and distribution of the images, adding that the situation has left her feeling humiliated and powerless.
On Thursday, xAI responded by filing a countersuit against St Clair in federal court in Texas, arguing that she violated the company’s user agreement, which requires legal disputes to be filed in that state. The company is seeking unspecified damages.
St Clair’s lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, criticized the countersuit, said her client would challenge the attempt to move the case out of New York. She described the allegations against xAI as involving a product that is not reasonably safe and that creates a public nuisance by enabling nonconsensual sexual imagery.
In recent interviews, St Clair said the case goes beyond her personal experience and reflects broader risks posed by artificial intelligence systems that can generate abusive content at scale without adequate safeguards.
Grok and Musk’s X platform are facing growing scrutiny from regulators in several countries, including the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and parts of Southeast Asia, over the spread of explicit deepfake images. Japanese authorities said on Friday that they were investigating the platform and considering measures to prevent the generation of inappropriate content.
