In early December, a Tennessee teenager allegedly received a message from an anonymous Instagram user warning that sexually explicit deepfake images of her had been uploaded to a Discord server.
One image purportedly was created from a photograph taken at her school’s homecoming last September. Another image, allegedly depicting her topless, appeared to have been generated from her yearbook portrait taken last June.
When the teenager, who is now a legal adult, eventually obtained a link to the Discord server, she allegedly found images and videos of at least 18 other girls who were minors at the time, many of whom she recognized from her school.
The new allegations are detailed in a 44-page complaint filed Monday in federal court in San Jose, Calif., by three Tennessee-based plaintiffs identified as Jane Does. The anonymous plaintiffs are suing Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, over its generative AI model, Grok. The proposed class-action lawsuit alleges xAI recklessly designed Grok to enable such abuse, and then, amid a public outcry, restricted the technology to paid subscribers and third-party companies rather than fix the problem.
“xAI — and its founder Elon Musk — saw a business opportunity: an opportunity to profit off the sexual predation of real people, including children,” the complaint obtained by Rolling Stone reads. “Limiting the image- and video-generation features to paid subscribers … does not prevent the creation of AI-generated CSAM (child sexual abuse material), it merely ensures that xAI will profit from all such content.”
Rolling Stone reached out to xAI for comment Monday but did not immediately receive a response.
“No one should have to live with the fear that these survivors now carry with them, but I am inspired by their strength and clarity of purpose in bringing this lawsuit on behalf of themselves and other minors in the Class,” Vanessa Baehr-Jones of Baehr-Jones Law, one of the firms representing the plaintiffs, told Rolling Stone in a statement.
“These are children whose school photographs and family pictures were turned into child sexual abuse material by a billion-dollar company’s AI tool and then traded among predators. Elon Musk and xAI deliberately designed Grok to produce sexually explicit content for financial gain, with no regard for the children and adults who would be harmed by it,” said Annika K. Martin of Lieff Cabraser, whose firm is also representing plaintiffs. “Without xAI, this harmful, illegal content could never, and would never, have existed. The lives of these girls have been shattered by the devastating loss of privacy and the deep sense of violation that no child should ever have to experience. We intend to hold xAI accountable for every child they harmed in this way.”
Grok’s image-generation feature surged in popularity in late December after Musk announced that users of X could use Grok to edit images posted to the platform with a single click. Although Grok was not supposed to generate fully nude images, users allegedly circumvented the restriction by asking the system to alter real photos so subjects appeared in “transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualized positions, and made to bend over so their genitals were visible,” the lawsuit states.
The image-generation feature was restricted to paid users on Jan. 9, with additional technical limits added on Jan. 14. In a Jan. 16 post on X, Musk said he was unaware of any naked images of minors generated by Grok. “Literally zero,” he wrote. “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 Center for Countering Digital Hate, meanwhile, reports that it reviewed a random sample of 200,000 images from the roughly 4.6 million images Grok produced between Dec. 29, 2025, and Jan. 8, 2026. Based on that sample, the group estimated that Grok generated about three million sexualized images during that period, including roughly 23,000 that allegedly depicted children. One Grok-generated image, the group said, showed six young girls wearing micro bikinis and remained publicly available on X as of Jan. 15.
The second plaintiff in the lawsuit said she was informed by law enforcement on Feb. 12, 2026, that she had also been targeted. According to the complaint, the person who ran the Discord server used Instagram photos of her wearing a blue bikini at the beach last October to generate images of her without clothing. The alleged perpetrator was arrested in December, the lawsuit says.
The three plaintiffs say they have suffered severe emotional distress. Their lawsuit seeks to hold xAI liable for the creation and distribution of the alleged child sexual abuse material and demands a jury trial.
Christine Wonsley with her husband, Elmore (second from left), attorney Ben Crump (left), and Rev. Al Sharpton (right), during a memorial service for her son Nolan Xavier Wells.Gerald Herbert/AP
Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino stand as Spain celebrates its World Cup victory, on July 19, 2026.
America Got the World Cup It Deserves — Good and Bad
For the past six weeks or so I’ve been having a recurring fight with my friends. The dispute is over whether or not it’s ethical to support the U.S. national team in the World Cup.
To the vast majority of people reading this article, this is an absurd question: of course you can and should support the United States Men’s National Team, you weirdo. And look, I’m with you. But despite the fact that my friends are pompous dorks who are no fun to watch the game with, the question they raise is valid: Are our national teams avatars of the administration in power, or of the people and promise of that country?
If you believe the former, then yeah, it’s pretty fucking weird to support the USMNT. In doing so, by that thinking, you’d be engaging in a sort of athletic nationalism on behalf of a country run by Donald Trump, the most corrupt president in history, who forced the Iranian national team to flee across the border immediately after the final whistle of each of their games, whose federal police have shot numerous civilians dead in the street during a brutal immigration crackdown, who has started a war and supported a genocide while covering up his close personal friendship with the most notorious pedophile in modern history.
I mean just look at him. On Sunday he waddled down onto the field to present Spain with their trophy, lingering on stage with the victorious team as they tried to celebrate. The presence of Mexican President Claudia Steinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did little to dilute the image of Trump standing next to his crony Gianni Infantino, grinning at all the trappings of their power, hands caressing a trophy they’d done nothing to earn, lingering well past his cue to leave Spain to their glory. This World Cup, literally, had Donald Trump’s fingerprints all over it.
And yet, this was one of the most thrilling, beautiful World Cups in recent memory. That’s America, baby — contradictions abound.
Over the past five weeks of the greatest athletic competition on Earth, we’ve seen games that will literally never leave my memory. The final, which I attended yesterday in New Jersey, was remarkably forgettable — a 0-0 draw until the 106th minute, with Spain dominating every second of play and yet unable to score, undone time and time again by their insistence on tricksy passing and the personal heroics of Argentina’s goalkeeper Emi Martinez. The rest of the tournament, however, delivered. Cabo Verde, refusing to lose until the very last moments of the first knockout round, battling back again and again against both teams that would eventually play in the final. The sheer dominance of France’s Kylian Mbappe in front of goal, scoring at will, rivaled only by the aging GOAT Leo Messi and the Norwegian warlord Erling Haaland. England’s heroic stand at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, 45 minutes in the rain, a man down, holding out for the win and singing “Wonderwall” with what felt like half the stadium when it ended. Off the pitch, too: the Algerian national team being welcomed with open arms by Lawrence, Kansas; Scottish braves drinking Boston dry and partying wildly with Haitian fans that overcame so much just to be at the tournament. In Mexico, of course, the World Cup was everything, and its fans threw joyous South Koreans pumped full of tequila into the air, and celebrated in the streets with opposing fans even after their hard-fought defeat to England.
For the United States, what the 2026 World Cup was — what our team was, what our fans were, what our performance as hosts was — is a reflection of two things at once: what our nation is and what it can be.
Our star striker, Folarin Balogun, was born here by accident, a citizen only because of a birthright system that our president is currently trying to erase. We have Ricardo and Giovanni and Freeman and Zendejas. We have another striker whose name is Haji, for goodness sake. I look at that team and I see the country America can be, one in which any soul born in or living within our arbitrary borders can become part of a great national project that seeks to improve the lives of everyone it can. And yet, I can also look at that team and see a reflection of what the country is, because there is an anchor around its neck. When Balogun was — albeit unjustly — suspended for a crucial match, Trump himself stepped in. Cronyism saved the day and got Balogun reinstated, but ruined the fragile harmony the team had enjoyed. On the pitch against Belgium, they came apart. Temperamental star Christian Pulisic tried to go alone and then quit, aging defender Tim Ream’s legs failed him when he needed them most, a young goalkeeper slipped and fell when he had no good options for support.
What more can you say about a team, about our country? The team is an entity that is capable of more but still has so far to go, that is vulnerable to the same forces of avarice and selfishness and fear that plague our national identity writ large.
It’s possible to end the story there, to say good riddance to another failed year and fractured team. But I think that’s a mistake. I think if you believe that you haven’t really been watching. I think that’s also why it pissed me off so much that some of my friends wouldn’t root for the U.S. Yes, we have flaws, like every country involved in the tournament. Yes, our current team management and political government are filled with morons. But if you won’t put on the shirt you’re essentially opting out of our future. We can’t wait around for a better world, a better team, a better president, before we deign to lend our support. Progress only comes from effort, from caring, from believing in something more.
One of my favorite images of the World Cup was a crowd shot of the opening match against Paraguay in Los Angeles: every race, color and creed of American there is, all covered in red white and blue. It’s corny and trite, sure. But that’s what it’s all about. That’s why we’re here. You have to believe. The U.S. won that game 4-2. In four years, we’ll be even better.