xAI filed a federal lawsuit in Texas on July 14 against Terry Harwood, accusing him of using its Grok chatbot to produce sexually explicit deepfakes of minors. The case, one of the first known instances of an AI company suing a user over misuse of its tools, was brought in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The company alleges Harwood opened multiple accounts under false identities and circumvented Grok's safeguards to convert non-sexual photographs of children and adults into explicit imagery. Harwood was arrested earlier this year on charges of sexually exploiting minors, according to a March 9 notice from South Carolina's attorney general. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and a permanent ban on Harwood's use of xAI's platform.
The action comes as xAI has suspended more than 52,000 accounts and reported over 73,000 complaints to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 2026, leading to nearly 250 arrests.