Baltimore just became the first major city in the United States to sue Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI. City leaders filed the lawsuit because the company’s image generator, Grok, allows users to create harmful deepfake pictures. The legal complaints against xAI continue to grow as more families and local governments speak out against the technology.
Mayor Brandon Scott strongly condemned the company in a recent public message. He argued that Grok produces fake, explicit images that cause permanent, lifelong trauma for innocent victims. Scott accused tech companies of directly enabling the sexual exploitation of children through these powerful AI tools. He made it clear that Baltimore will fight back against this growing trend. He called the software a massive threat to public safety, privacy, and human dignity. The city wants to hold the responsible business leaders completely accountable for the damage they cause.
This legal battle adds to a growing list of problems for xAI, which merged with SpaceX last month. The company now faces investigations in several different countries. Regulators started stepping in after Grok users generated massive amounts of explicit, deepfake content featuring women and children who never gave their consent. Just last week, lawyers representing three teenagers in Tennessee filed a class action lawsuit against the company. Grok had generated highly sexualized and degrading images of those specific teens, prompting their families to take swift legal action.
Baltimore leaders filed their new lawsuit in a circuit court on March 24. The mayor and the city council accuse xAI of breaking local consumer protection laws. They also claim the company engages in deceptive and unfair business practices. Specifically, the lawsuit points out that Musk’s companies market Grok and X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, as perfectly safe spaces for regular users. City officials argue that this marketing is completely false, given what the tools actually do.
The court documents specifically highlight a disturbing trend in which users asked Grok to put everyday people in bikinis or to digitally remove their clothing entirely. Elon Musk actually participated in this exact trend. The CEO, who also runs Tesla and SpaceX, shared a Grok-generated image of himself wearing a string bikini on his platform.
Lawyers for Baltimore argue that Musk’s post acted as a massive public endorsement. Because Musk owns the platform and serves as its main public face, his actions signaled to millions of users that editing real people into revealing situations was funny, acceptable, and even encouraged. The lawsuit claims Musk basically promoted the exact feature bad actors exploit to create non-consensual sexual images.
Through this lawsuit, Baltimore hopes to secure the maximum financial penalties allowed by law. While the city has not yet requested a specific dollar amount, officials plan to make the company pay. City leaders also want the judge to issue strict legal orders requiring xAI to immediately change how X and Grok operate. They want the court to stop the company from exploiting Baltimore residents and require massive platform redesigns. The overall goal is to permanently block users from generating non-consensual intimate images and illegal abuse material on the platform. The city also demands that Musk’s companies completely revise their marketing campaigns.
Executives at SpaceX and xAI did not immediately respond when reporters asked them for a comment. However, a new report highlights just how bad this problem has become. The Internet Watch Foundation, a charity based in the United Kingdom, published a study on Tuesday showing who actually suffers from these AI tools. The organization found that young girls remain the primary targets of this technology. According to their 2025 data, girls appeared in 97 percent of the illegal, AI-generated sexual images the charity reviewed.
