Elon Musk’s artificial-intelligence company xAI has sued a South Carolina man arrested earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting children.
The company alleges the man misused its Grok AI system, which is integrated into the X platform, to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
He was charged with three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in the second degree and five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in the third degree, both felony offenses punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment on each count.
Investigators stated that Harwood possessed and distributed files of child sexual abuse material.
Contact information for Harwood was not immediately available.
xAI alleged that Harwood uploaded non-sexual images of adults and minors to Grok and tried to use the system to generate sexually explicit “deepfakes” based on them.
The complaint also alleged he created nonconsensual sexual imagery of adults.
The company asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a court order permanently blocking Harwood from using Grok.
“Defendant’s actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff’s tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage,” xAI said in the complaint.
“His conduct was knowing, intentional, and calculated. South Carolina law enforcement arrested him in connection with the creation of CSAM.”
xAI’s complaint said that the company “enforces its rules against violators through account suspensions, account terminations, and by reporting suspected child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.”
The lawsuit said that the company has suspended 52,222 accounts and made 73,604 reports to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2026, resulting in at least 244 arrests.
xAI said in January that it had blocked all users from editing images of “real people in revealing clothing” and from generating images of people in revealing clothing in “jurisdictions where it’s illegal.”
“Literally zero. Obviously, Grok does not spontaneously generate images, it does so only according to user requests,” Musk said.
“When asked to generate images, it will refuse to produce anything illegal, as the operating principle for Grok is to obey the laws of any given country or state. There may be times when adversarial hacking of Grok prompts does something unexpected. If that happens, we fix the bug immediately.”
The Epoch Times reached out to xAI for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
