xAI loses bid to block Minnesota law on AI nude images
Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI’s request for a preliminary injunction, leaving Minnesota’s restrictions in effect as the lawsuit continues.
U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI’s request for a preliminary injunction1 on September 4, refusing to pause Minnesota’s law while the company’s lawsuit proceeds.
Minnesota’s Attorney General’s Office quoted the court as saying the balance of harms and public interest “tips steeply in favor of the State” and said the law was aimed at protecting the public from AI-nudification harms.
“strongly suggests a lack of irreparable harm”
The court recounted committee evidence that AI software had been used to fabricate sexually explicit images of students and that those images could then be quickly circulated through social-media group chats. Minnesota’s law covers services that let users alter or generate realistic images showing an identifiable person with an intimate part absent from the original; it exempts services that require the user’s technical skill.
xAI sued in July, alleging Minnesota’s law infringed on free speech, MPR reported. Judge Donovan Frank’s order says xAI disabled its nudification tool in Minnesota, making penalties unlikely, and rejects its claimed costs of controls and lost users as irreparable harm. Frank noted xAI filed its injunction motion nearly three months after the law’s signing and only three days before it took effect, with no specific explanation; that delay “strongly suggests a lack of irreparable harm.”1 MPR reported that the constitutional issues remain complex and will be examined as the case proceeds2.
The court’s account also set out xAI’s reliance on its safeguards: the company told Frank its rules bar nudifying real people, placing them in sexual contexts, and sexualizing or exploiting children; it said it can suspend accounts and report suspected child sexual abuse material to law enforcement. The court said the State cited at least three lawsuits filed against xAI involving allegations that children’s photographs were used to create child pornography on Grok Imagine1. The court did not decide those allegations, and Minnesota’s law remains in effect as xAI’s First Amendment challenge proceeds.
Sources
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