On Thursday afternoon, Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Elon Musk’s 14 publicly known children, filed a lawsuit in New York against his company xAI, claiming that Grok, the company’s AI chatbot, produced sexually explicit images of her at users’ request. The writer and political strategist has been locked in a flurry of back-and-forth legal disputes with Musk since last February, when she announced publicly that she had given birth to his son Romulus in September 2024.
St. Clair alleges that X users found photos of her as a 14-year-old and requested that Grok undress her and put her in a bikini, as well as generate a variety of graphic deepfake content that included images of her “kneeling on the floor in a sex pose” and sporting a tattoo that read “Elon’s whore.”
“In one image, St. Clair, who is Jewish, is stripped and put in a string bikini covered with swastikas,” the complaint reads. She further alleges that the platform not only kept some of the explicit images online for more than seven days, but also removed St. Clair’s premium subscription following her complaints.
In a preemptive defensive lawsuit filed the same afternoon, xAI sued St. Clair, alleging that when she created an account on the X platform she agreed to terms of service that require any litigation involving the company take place in state or federal courts in Texas.
St. Clair is being represented in her suit by lawyer Carrie Goldberg, who has said she specializes in defending victims of “pervs, assholes, psychos, and trolls,” and has represented clients against Harvey Weinstein. In recent years, her work has increasingly focused on holding Big Tech companies liable for harms that occur on their online platforms, including stalking, trafficking, sextortion, and the dissemination of child sex-abuse material.
In this photo illustration, a iPhone screen displaying the Grok app and logo is seen on January 7, 2026
Anna Barclay/Getty Images
In response to xAI’s suit, Goldberg told Vanity Fair, “We are appalled that xAI filed a bonkers lawsuit against [St. Clair] for providing the obligatory notice to them that she was seeking a Temporary Restraining Order.” She added, “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.”
These suits land amid a global regulatory crisis surrounding the rapidly developing capabilities of AI models, which have so far been allowed to progress largely without legal guardrails. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. When reached for comment, xAI’s auto responder replied, “Legacy Media Lies.”
