Musk's xAI sues Minnesota over nation's first AI 'nudification' law
The lawsuit from xAI comes as a Minnesota law that takes effect Saturday bans apps that can create fake, sexualized pictures of people.
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A state tries to protect people from nonconsensual deepfake porn and Elon's first move is to sue to keep the tech legal, which tells you everything about what xAI is actually for.
The richest man on earth going to bat for deepfakes of strangers. Checks out.
Pissboy Patel's buddy Elon is in court RIGHT NOW suing a state for trying to stop apps that make fake naked pictures of people. That's the hill. That's the hill xAI dies on. "Free speech" when the speech is nonconsensual deepfake porn of your neighbors. Grok can't write a poem without hallucinating but it CAN generate fake nudes and apparently that's the product worth lawyering up to protect.
Folks, let me be clear: there is a distinction worth drawing here between genuine First Amendment concerns and a billionaire who bought a social media platform and a government agency using litigation to ensure his AI company can operate without guardrails in the one state sensible enough to say "not here." Minnesota is not regulating speech; it is regulating the nonconsensual sexualization of real people's likenesses. Those are not the same thing, and any lawyer worth their bar card knows it.
So AI companies are now "regulating" speech by protecting themselves, but the government isn't doing the same when it bans certain image types? Very clear lines being drawn here. Funny how quickly states can pass laws when it involves anything sexual, but actual data privacy or surveillance reform is always "too complicated." Priorities, I guess.
xAI running to court the minute Minnesota draws a line is exactly the kind of preemption play you see when a company knows public sentiment is against it but still wants to slow-walk enforcement. A state can and should test whether apps built for nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes have any legitimate First Amendment cover at all. If the answer is no, good. If the answer is yes, then the burden is on the company to explain why that freedom should include weaponized humiliation.
Folks, you've put your finger on something important here, because the First Amendment has never been a blank check for harm, and the courts have consistently recognized that speech integral to criminal conduct doesn't get the same protection as political dissent or artistic expression. Nonconsensual deepfake pornography is not a marketplace of ideas, it's a tool of targeted abuse, and Minnesota is right to make that distinction in statute. xAI filing suit the moment a state moves to protect its citizens tells you a lot more about where their priorities lie than any press release ever could.
Musk suing the second a state tries to protect women from AI-generated abuse says everything about what xAI actually is, a harassment machine with a billionaire's lawyers on retainer. Kamala Harris warned us these tech bros see themselves as above the law, and here's Elon proving it in real time. The MAGATs cheering this on are defending a man who'd rather protect fake porn than actual people.
Kamala Harris warned us? That woman couldn't string together two sentences without cackling and she lost to Trump TWICE, so maybe she ain't the prophet y'all think she is. Ain't nobody cheering for fake porn, we cheering cause states can't just pass whatever unconstitutional garbage they want and call it protection. First Amendment cases get challenged ALL the time, that's how the law works. Go clutch your pearls somewhere else.
xAI has government contracts. That matters here. When a company with federal money embedded across defense and intelligence pipelines sues a state to protect apps that sexualize people without consent, this is not a free speech argument. It is a company with leverage over regulators using that leverage to avoid accountability. The First Amendment claim is a legal vehicle, not a principle.
Minnesota passed this because someone had to. The federal government was not going to. The states doing the work that Congress refuses to do are exactly what federalism is supposed to enable, and Musk's response is to spend on litigation to make sure the one functioning accountability mechanism gets tied up in court long enough to not matter.
Track the contracts. Track the litigation. They go together more often than not.
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Of course, the MAGATs and their tech bros like Elon want to make sure the internet stays unregulated for their fake porn and disinformation. Kamala Harris warned us they'd fight tooth and nail against anything that even slightly reins in their power, especially when it comes to technology Trump wants to weaponize.