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Twenty-seven-year-old conservative influencer Ashley St Clair has been a long-time darling of the MAGA world. In her early twenties, she dropped out of college and became an outspoken proponent of right-wing causes, including\u00a0anti-transgender\u00a0activism. Five years later, she had a child with Elon Musk\u2014a man she\u2019s currently battling in a New York federal <\/strong>courtroom.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, St Clair filed a lawsuit against Musk\u2019s AI company in response to a flood of deepfakes made by xAI\u2019s chatbot Grok and shared on X, the social media platform Musk owns. She told Fortune<\/em>\u00a0earlier in January that X users were turning pictures <\/strong>on her X profile into sexualized AI-generated images <\/strong>of her, including some she said depicted her as a minor.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere were pictures of me with nothing covering me except a piece of floss with my toddler\u2019s backpack in the background and photos of me where it looks like I\u2019m not wearing a top at all,\u201d she said.\u00a0\u201cI felt so disgusted and violated.\u201d<\/p>\n The dispute between St Clair and X is just one part of a wider wave of outrage and backlash after xAI\u2019s Grok AI model was used for a widespread, non-consensual \u201cdigital undressing\u201d campaign that began in late December. Many users discovered they could tag Grok on the X platform and ask it to edit images from users\u2019 profiles. According to research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, over a span of 11 days\u2014from December 29, 2025, through January 8, 2026\u2014Grok generated approximately 3 million sexualized images. The legal fight got unpleasant quickly. After being notified of the action, Musk\u2019s company almost immediately counter-sued the conservative influencer, accusing her of violating the platform\u2019s terms of service, which state any disputes with X must be brought in Texas. Representatives for Musk did not respond to specific questions from Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n Musk has typically preferred to fight his legal battles in Texas. In 2024, X updated its terms of service to require that all federal lawsuits against the company be filed in the Northern District of Texas, despite its headquarters being in Bastrop, which falls under the Western District of Texas.<\/p>\n Musk and the company have not stated their reasons for that stipulation. But 10 of the Northern District\u2019s 11 active judges were appointed by Republican presidents, and unlike most federal courts, the district assigns cases based on which division they\u2019re filed in rather than through random assignment. Ethics experts have also raised potential conflict?of?interest concerns because Judge Reed O\u2019Connor, who has overseen several lawsuits involving Musk\u2019s platform X, has owned Tesla stock. O\u2019Connor has sometimes declined to recuse himself, though he at least once stepped aside after his holdings drew scrutiny.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really just ridiculous,\u201d St Clair said of the countersuit, arguing that X\u2019s terms of service don\u2019t apply since she\u2019s suing over images created of her without her consent, not over her own use of the platform.<\/p>\n St Clair says she\u2019s now trying to fight the counter-suit, block any venue change to Texas, and fight to establish greater responsibility from generative AI platforms.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about holding these platforms accountable and holding these very new generative AI tools accountable when they\u2019re launched without any regard for the damage they\u2019ve done, damage that was completely foreseeable,\u201d she said. \u201cI will never get the images of not only myself, but of other people\u2019s children and other women that I had to see out of my head.\u201d<\/p>\n xAI released an update of the chatbot earlier this month and claimed that Grok\u2019s X account was no longer allowed to edit images of real people in revealing clothing. St Clair says that users have found workarounds, including using the standalone Grok app, and the images are still being distributed <\/strong>on the X platform.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still happening. People are still able to produce these images on the standalone Grok app and website,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are also images of me being burned that are being produced. Still, provocative images of me are being produced. It hasn\u2019t stopped.\u201d <\/p>\n European non-profit, AI Forensics, also found that Grok was still generating sexualized images of individuals despite X\u2019s restrictions. The researchers found users bypassing the ban by accessing Grok directly through its website rather than through X, or by using Grok Imagine, the AI\u2019s video and image generation tool.<\/p>\n St Clair has faced blowback from her fight with xAI and Musk: Comments on X regularly accuse her of being a vindictive ex-girlfriend who\u2019s after Musk\u2019s money; she was stripped of her \u201cverified\u201d status on X and the ad-revenue sharing scheme that came with it; and, in one now-deleted X post, Musk even threatened to sue for full custody of their child after St Clair made comments expressing regret for her previous stance on trans rights.<\/p>\n X\u2019s \u201cnudifying\u201d trend that targeted St Clair has sparked global concern in part due to the proliferation of sexualized images of children. According to research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, of the 3 million sexualized images produced by Grok in the 11-period, 23,000 appeared to depict children, reflecting an estimated average pace of one new sexualized image of a minor every 41 seconds. These included a selfie uploaded by a schoolgirl who was \u201cundressed\u201d by Grok, and an image of six young girls wearing micro bikinis, generated by Grok.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really hard not to conclude that this is a disaster of [Elon Musk\u2019s] own making,\u201d Imran Ahmed, the founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told Fortune. <\/em>\u201cMusk was very clear that in his own personal postings, he mocked people who were concerned about how it was being abused, and seemed to make light of it, rather than take it seriously and seek to remedy the situation for almost two weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n Grok is also facing a class action lawsuit in California over the sexualized deepfakes, as well as a formal probe by the EU Commission. If X is found to have breached the EU\u2019s Digital Services Act, the company could face fines of up to 6% of its global annual revenue.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe EU actions are fantastic. I think it\u2019s really a step in the right direction, and I hope more people and leaders follow,\u201d St Clair said. The Trump administration has taken multiple actions against what it views as European \u201ccensorship\u201d and has a particular issue with the Digital Services Act. In one of the administration\u2019s more dramatic moves, in December it barred five European nationals, including Ahmed, from entering the U.S., for allegedly pressuring tech firms to censor American viewpoints.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Monday, the EU regulator said it would assess whether \u201cmanipulated sexually explicit images\u201d generated by Grok have been shown to users in the bloc, and warned it may \u201cimpose interim measures\u201d if X refuses to implement meaningful adjustments. Similar investigations are underway in Australia, France, and Germany, while X was temporarily banned in Indonesia and Malaysia.<\/p>\n \u201cAI platforms don\u2019t have the same protections from litigation that social media companies do, and this is an important test of whether or not negligence law and prompt design law can be applied to AI platforms,\u201d Ahmed said. \u201cIf it\u2019s found that they are liable, it will likely change the AI chatbot industry forever.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Ashley #Clair #MAGA #influencer #Elon #Musks #empire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Twenty-seven-year-old conserva… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[10831,10832,3801,885,554,5526,10833,9568,796,930,780],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16535"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16535\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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In the suit, St Clair, who is Jewish, also claims the AI chatbot generated an image that put her \u201cin a string bikini covered with swastikas.\u201d The more St Clair spoke out about the issue, she said, the more she was targeted with the images.<\/p>\nGrok has sparked global regulatory scrutiny<\/h2>\n