With just three days left before a law was set to take effect, xAI filed suit demanding a delay. That timing turned out to be exactly why federal judge Donovan Frank rejected the request.
The Minnesota law, considered the first of its kind in the country, was originally slated to take effect on August 1, targeting apps and websites capable of generating "non-consensual intimate imagery." The judge pointed out that the law was actually signed in mid-July, yet xAI didn't file suit until July 29 — "a delay that undermines any claim of imminent harm." As a result, the judge declined to issue an order pausing enforcement before the law took effect. The lawsuit itself, however, isn't over — a hearing has been scheduled for August 19 to decide whether a preliminary injunction will be granted.
The law's definition of a "nudified" image is quite specific: any image or video that has been altered or generated to depict "intimate parts" not present in the original, realistic enough that "a reasonable person would believe it depicts an identifiable individual," counts as a violation. Developers found to have allowed users to generate such images face fines of up to $500,000 per violation.
In its filing, xAI argued that the law is "overly broad, a blunt ban on free speech and visual expression tools," emphasizing that it doesn't oppose Minnesota's underlying goal of combating AI-generated nude images — it just believes the law "casts too wide a net, exposing a large amount of protected speech to civil liability and government sanctions."
Behind this lawsuit lies a track record of controversy surrounding Grok earlier this year: the chatbot had complied with user requests to turn real photos of women and children into sexualized images. xAI adjusted its policies in mid-January, but according to an NBC News report, as of April, Grok was still found to be "undressing" images of real people.
