Musk’s X.AI Sues to Stop Minnesota’s AI ‘Nudification’ Ban

Musk’s X.AI Sues to Stop Minnesota’s AI ‘Nudification’ Ban

Elon Musk’s X.AI (xAI) has filed a First Amendment challenge to a new Minnesota law prohibiting access to so-called “nudification technology”—AI tools that digitally strip clothing from real people’s photos or videos to make them appear nude, without their consent.

Aimed at protecting families and children from AI-driven sexual abuse imagery, the first-of-its-kind law (HF 1606) passed earlier this year with virtually unanimous support from Minnesota lawmakers.

It’s hard to argue with a law opposing AI-generated nude images of victims without their consent, especially when most of those victims are women and children, according to the bill’s author. Musk’s lawyers don’t challenge the state’s interest in protecting them. In fact, they say xAI prohibits its own users from generating non-consensual, sexualized AI images.

But Minnesota’s broad ban goes too far, the lawsuit states, imposing draconian penalties on companies for providing a service that allows users to create images and videos that arguably don’t contain any “nudity.”

The Minnesota law punishes AI platforms that let users “nudify” images—that is, alter photos of real people to depict an “intimate part.” However—and herein lies the problem—“intimate part” isn’t defined in the law itself; it’s borrowed by way of reference from Minnesota’s criminal sexual-contact statute, defined there as “the primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breast of a human being.”

That definition was designed for a law criminalizing nonconsensual touching—not AI imaging, the complaint argues. It therefore sweeps in ordinary, non-sexual depictions such as men without shirts, people in shorts or swimsuits, and other body parts routinely displayed in public—images that would not ordinarily be regarded as “nudity.”

For example, the complaint says this image would be banned because President Trump’s inner thigh is exposed:

Another example depicts a sumo wrestling match between two political heavyweights—former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker:

No one would call these men “naked”—yet the statute would bar this image too, xAI’s lawyers say.

Under the Minnesota ban’s broad terms, a provider is liable even if the people depicted consented or created the “nudified” image themselves, according to the complaint—and even if the image is never shared. They are liable, too, even if the company has a system in place to prevent the generation of nude images, the lawsuit says.

Minnesota’s law “makes service owners strictly liable every time a user succeeds in making an image the statute defines as ‘nudification’”—to the staggering tune of $500,000 per image.

On top of all this, the law allows victims to bring private lawsuits carrying treble damages, punitive damages, and attorney fees.

Faced with these whopping fines, providers may have “no choice” but to change their services in Minnesota.

In their lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, xAI claims the Minnesota ban violates the First Amendment by overly restricting speech based on content.

They ask the court to declare the law unconstitutional and block its enforcement, with an emergency motion now pending to enjoin the ban before it goes into effect on August 1.

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