Who is Ashley St. Clair, who sued Elon Musk's xAI over Grok's AI-deepfakes?

In an unfortunate development involving the AI chatbot Grok's generation of explicit images and deepfakes, Elon Musk’s xAI has been sued by Ashley St. Clair.

Who is Ashley St. Clair and why she sued xAI?

Ashley St. Clair is the mother of one of Musk's sons. She alleges that the AI chatbot Grok generated sexually explicit deepfakes of her without her consent.

The lawsuit, filed in New York, claims, “xAI’s product Grok, a generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) chatbot, uses AI to undress, humiliate, and sexually exploit victims.”

Clair’s legal action comes on the heels of xAI’s announcement that Grok would no longer edit “images of real people in revealing clothing” on Musk’s social media platform X (formerly Twitter), after backlash over the chatbot creating deepfake nude images of adults and children.

Clair, a 27-year-old writer and political commentator, alleges in her lawsuit that Grok produced and distributed “countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading deepfake content” of her, even after she informed the chatbot that she “did not consent” to being digitally undressed.

The petition claims that users on X requested Grok to undress her using photos from when she was 14 years old.

During an appearance on CNN, Clair highlighted the lack of consequences for xAI's actions, stating, “They are not taking any measures to stop this behaviour at scale.”

Musk posted on X that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok” and asserted that Grok would refuse to produce anything illegal.

As Clair is seeking a jury trial and compensation, citing emotional distress and a loss of privacy, it's noteworthy that she has previously engaged in quarrels with Musk, who has expressed intentions to secure full custody of their child.