Elon Musk's xAI company, which develops artificial intelligence (AI) Grok, has filed a lawsuit against South Carolina resident Terry Wayne Harwood for producing materials with sexualized violence against children (so-called child pornography) using a neural network. According to Ars Technica, the complaint was the first of its kind and was filed shortly after the company itself was accused of facilitating the production of such materials.
Harwood, 67, was arrested on charges of possessing and distributing child pornography in February this year and his trial has not yet begun. xAI said in the lawsuit that it contributed to his arrest by discovering that the man had been creating nude images of people using two accounts over the course of several months.
According to the plaintiffs, Harwood used photographs available online, including those allegedly of a 10-year-old girl. The company emphasized that the man circumvented restrictions on the generation of this kind of content using allegorical wording in AI prompts.
According to Ars Technica, xAI's lawsuit may be part of a defense strategy against accusations of facilitating the production of child porn. Previously, three teenage girls in Tennessee filed a class-action complaint, and then they were joined by another American minor, who said that her stepfather produced 7,000 pornographic materials using Grok.
Musk's company insists in its lawsuit against Harwood that the man violated the agreement on the use of the neural network, and therefore must pay compensation for damage caused to both injured third parties and the reputation of the AI developer. The firm’s lawyers characterize the Grok model itself as “a neutral tool under the control of the user.”
“As with any generative AI, every response, every image, and every generation is the result of user prompts and instructions,” xAI emphasizes in the lawsuit.
Musk has not commented on the lawsuit, but has previously stated that he is not aware of the production of child pornography using Grok. Accusations regarding this matter against xAI and the social network X (formerly Twitter), where the neural network is embedded, were also heard in Europe this year.
