08/03/2026
This
With a single uploaded photo and a few clicks, AI "nudification" apps can turn any real person -- a classmate, a coworker, a child -- into po*******hy. 99% of the fake n**e images they generate depict women and girls. This week, Minnesota became the first state in the country to go after the companies that build them, with a law that threatens the makers of the technology with civil penalties of up to $500,000. Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, sued to block it. On Friday, a federal judge refused to stop the law from taking effect -- at least for now. As the law's author, State Senator Erin Maye Quade, put it: "It's pretty audacious to sue to prevent a law that protects children from being turned into child sexual abuse material."
Until now, laws like this have gone after the person who makes the image. Minnesota's goes after the company that built the tool. States have long banned possessing child sexual abuse material and distributing nonconsensual deepfakes, but those laws reach the individual only after the harm is done. The new law goes upstream, to the businesses whose products can turn a yearbook photo into po*******hy with a single prompt. It is an approach other governments have already embraced: this spring, the United Kingdom made it a crime to make or supply nudification tools, with its technology secretary vowing that "those who profit from them or enable their use will feel the full force of the law."
The law grew out of one Minnesota woman's ordeal. In 2024, Molly Kelley -- then six months pregnant -- learned that a close family friend had used photos from her and her friends' social media pages to generate pornographic images and videos of them. She was one of more than eighty women in the Twin Cities targeted by the same man. Because the images were never distributed and the women were adults, he appeared to have broken no law at all. Kelley spent the next two years pushing for one, working alongside Maye Quade and testifying beside other survivors.
"When people hear about po*******hy made with deepfake technology, they think of high-profile cases involving celebrities like Taylor Swift," she said. "I am proof that this can happen to anybody." The measure passed the Minnesota legislature with overwhelming, bipartisan support -- 132 to 1 in the House, and unanimously, 65 to 0, in the Senate.
There is one conspicuous exception to that consensus: Elon Musk. His artificial intelligence company, xAI -- the maker of the Grok chatbot and image generator built into his platform, X -- filed a federal lawsuit to block the law, arguing that it violates the First Amendment. In its complaint, xAI calls the statute "an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression." The company says the penalties are excessive and that, because the law can hold a platform liable regardless of whether it tried to prevent the abuse, it leaves companies "no practical choice" but to strip features from their products.
Minnesota's lawmakers were unmoved. "I don't see this as a free speech issue," Maye Quade said at a press conference the day after the suit was filed. "This does not regulate content; it does not regulate art. It regulates conduct. Prompts are not art, and we protect art specifically in this law." She noted that she had worked with several other technology companies while crafting the bill, and that not one of them had said the ban would hurt their business -- xAI, in other words, stands alone even among its peers.
Governor Tim Walz was blunter still, writing simply, "See you in court, creep." And Attorney General Keith Ellison, whom the suit names directly, was unequivocal. "Using AI to generate n**e images of people against their will is appalling," he said. "There are plenty of worthy debates to have about AI policy. This is not one of them... I'll see X in court."
But it was Maye Quade who spotlighted what makes the lawsuit so galling. "I am surprised that Elon Musk's attorneys had time to file a lawsuit in Minnesota," she said, "because they were sued three different times for this exact conduct that is now illegal in the state of Minnesota."
She was referring to a record that is, by now, extensive. Last year, xAI released a feature for Grok it called "Spicy Mode," which let users generate sexually explicit images and videos, including by manipulating photographs of real people -- and which Musk personally promoted as a business strategy.
Over an eleven-day stretch from late December 2025 into January 2026, researchers estimated that Grok generated roughly three million sexualized images, about twenty-three thousand of them depicting children. Every other major AI company had adopted safeguards to prevent exactly this. xAI had not. And when the scale of the abuse became public, the company did not shut the feature down; it made it a premium benefit for paying subscribers.
The fallout has been global. In February, French police raided X's Paris offices as part of a criminal investigation, and prosecutors summoned Musk himself for questioning; regulators in the United Kingdom and the European Union opened formal investigations of their own. Closer to home, three teenage girls from Tennessee have filed a class action lawsuit against xAI, alleging the company knowingly produced and profited from child sexual abuse material -- a class their attorneys estimate could include thousands of children whose real photos were altered by Grok. "Without xAI," said Annika Martin, one of the attorneys representing them, "this harmful, illegal content could never, and would never, have existed."
Beneath the legal arguments about free speech and overbreadth lies a simpler fact about who this technology is built to harm: overwhelmingly, women and girls -- and, increasingly, children. Britain's Children's Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, whose office found these tools often work only on female bodies, has called for banning them outright. "There is no good reason for tools that create naked images of children," she said. "They have no value in a society where we value the safety and sanctity of childhood. Their existence is a scandal."
At least for the moment, Minnesota has prevailed. On Friday, one day before the law was to take effect, a federal judge refused xAI's request to block it, noting that the company had waited nearly three months after the law was signed to sue -- filing its emergency motion only days before the deadline. "Such a delay in bringing the action," Judge Donovan Frank wrote, "suggests that harm is not immediate."
The fight is not over: the judge will hear arguments later this month on whether to ultimately strike the law down, and xAI's First Amendment challenge continues. But the ban takes effect as written. "I am extremely proud to be defending this law," Ellison said, "and along with it, the dignity of the people of Minnesota."
Maye Quade's law tests a single proposition: that a company which builds the machinery of nonconsensual sexual imagery can be made to answer for it. Musk is betting it can't. Minnesota -- nearly unanimously, across both parties, alongside the women who have lived this -- is betting it can. For now, the law is on their side.
---
No one should be able to build and profit from the tools of image-based sexual abuse without consequence. Here's how to help.
--> The DEFIANCE Act, bipartisan legislation that would give every victim of nonconsensual sexually explicit deepfakes -- including adults -- the right to sue those who create and distribute them, passed the Senate unanimously in January. Six months later, it remains stalled in the House Judiciary Committee, where Republican leadership still has not brought it to a vote. Call your representative through the U.S. Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and urge them to demand it be brought to the floor.
--> If you or someone you know has been targeted by nonconsensual intimate images, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative offers a confidential helpline and resources at https://cybercivilrights.org, and StopNCII.org
--> To learn more about the class action lawsuit against xAI, or to reach the legal team representing the young women bringing it, visit Lieff Cabraser at https://www.lieffcabraser.com/2026/03/lchb-files-class-action-obo-minor-victims-alleging-xais-grok-generated-and-profited-from-ai-sexual-exploitation-images-and-videos/
---
For an excellent book for parents on helping kids learn to navigate the digital world, we highly recommend "Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World" at https://www.amightygirl.com/growing-up-in-public
For two valuable books to help tweens and teens develop healthy online habits, we recommend “First Phone: A Child's Guide to Digital Responsibility, Safety, and Etiquette” for ages 10 and up (https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780593538333) and "The Social Media Workbook for Teens" for ages 13 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/the-social-media-workbook-for-teens)
To teach children -- girls and boys alike -- about the need to respect others and their personal boundaries from a young age, we recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)
If you know a teen girl struggling after sexual abuse or trauma, “The Sexual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from Sexual Assault and Abuse” may help at https://www.amightygirl.com/sexual-trauma-workbook-girls
---
--> To read about the federal judge's ruling allowing Minnesota's nudification law to take effect, and the state's response, visit the Minnesota Attorney General's office at https://www.ag.state.mn.us/Office/Communications/2026/07/31_xAI.asp
--> To read The 19th's reporting on Minnesota's first-in-the-nation nudification ban and the survivors behind it, visit https://19thnews.org/2026/04/minnesota-nudification-ban-ai-deepfake/
--> To read more about the law, xAI's lawsuit, and the lawmakers who wrote it, visit KARE 11 at https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/minnesota-lawmakers-defend-new-ai-nudification-ban-after-lawsuit-elon-musks-company/89-ee2b107d-ca95-4398-98b7-09f0f6530a8b
--> To read Molly Kelley's account of how she became an advocate for the law after being targeted, visit the Minnesota Reformer at https://minnesotareformer.com/briefs/elon-musks-ai-company-sues-minnesota-attorney-general-ellison-over-nudification-ban/
--> To read The 19th's reporting on the women and girls suing xAI over Grok's sexualized deepfakes, visit https://19thnews.org/2026/03/women-girls-lawsuit-grok-ai-deepfakes/
