Ashley St. Clair, a conservative influencer and the mother of one of Elon Musk's children, sued Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, on Thursday in New York, alleging that its Grok AI tool created sexually explicit deepfakes of her. The lawsuit claims that the Grok chatbot generated AI-generated or altered images of St. Clair, including some featuring swastikas, after users on the social media platform X prompted the AI with her photos, according to court documents.

St. Clair alleges that after she requested xAI to cease creating such images, "countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading deepfake content" of her was produced and publicly distributed by Grok, according to Ars Technica. One instance cited in the lawsuit involved the alteration of a photo of St. Clair from when she was 14 years old.

xAI, the parent company of both X and Grok, has responded by counter-suing St. Clair for violating its terms of service. The company argues that St. Clair violated the terms of service by filing the lawsuit in New York, claiming that disputes must be settled in Texas.

St. Clair's lawyer stated, "We intend to hold Grok accountable and to help establish clear legal boundaries for the entire public's benefit to prevent AI from being weaponized for abuse," according to the BBC.

The legal battle highlights growing concerns about the potential for AI to be misused in creating non-consensual imagery and raises questions about the legal boundaries surrounding such use. X did not respond directly to enquiries by BBC News about the lawsuits. The case is ongoing, and the next steps involve legal proceedings in both New York and Texas.