A fourth plaintiff has joined a class action lawsuit accusing xAI‘s Grok chatbot of generating child sexual abuse material, expanding a case that already names three teenagers. The new plaintiff, identified in court filings as Jane Doe 4, alleges her stepfather used Grok to create explicit images from her childhood photos.
The lawsuit expands the scope of the ongoing Grok CSAM lawsuit against xAI, which argues the chatbot’s image generation tools failed to prevent widespread abuse. According to the complaint, Jane Doe 4’s stepfather generated more than 7,000 sexually explicit images of her using Grok, including one derived from a photo taken when she was 11 years old.
What the Grok CSAM lawsuit alleges
Court documents state that the stepfather traded the images online before law enforcement raided his devices as part of a separate CSAM investigation. He was found dead in his car two days later, in an apparent suicide. Jane Doe 4’s addition brings the total number of named plaintiffs to four, and the suit seeks class-action status on behalf of what it describes as at least thousands of minors affected by similar Grok-generated material.
The original three plaintiffs, all teenagers, filed suit earlier this year, arguing that Grok’s image tools could be prompted to produce sexualized depictions of real, identifiable minors with minimal safeguards in place. Their complaint names xAI directly and seeks damages along with changes to how the company moderates image requests submitted through Grok. All four plaintiffs are identified only by pseudonym in court filings, a common practice in cases involving minors and CSAM.
Regulators are already circling xAI
The lawsuit is not the only scrutiny xAI faces over how Grok handles explicit imagery. California’s attorney general opened an investigation in January into whether xAI’s tools produced nonconsensual deepfake nudes of women and children. The European Union has also launched a separate probe into X, the social platform tied to Grok, examining whether the company has adequate safeguards against AI-generated CSAM spreading on the service. Grok is integrated directly into X, giving users access to its image generation features from within the platform itself.
Neither the lawsuit nor the two regulatory investigations has drawn a public response from xAI so far. The California probe and the EU inquiry are proceeding separately from the civil case, meaning xAI could face financial penalties from regulators in addition to any damages awarded to the plaintiffs.
The case adds to a growing list of legal and regulatory challenges facing generative AI companies, as courts weigh how much responsibility chatbot makers bear when their tools are used to create abusive content. For now, the Grok CSAM lawsuit remains in its early stages, and no trial date has yet been set by the court.