xAI has faced mounting pressure to acknowledge the issue of illegal image generation and sexual abuse by the Grok chatbot. For this reason, the company took its first legal action on Tuesday against a user who had used the tool to produce illegal content.
Tessery Wayne Harwood, the individual being sued, was arrested earlier this year for possessing and distributing images of child abuse, which was confirmed by the South Carolina Attorney's Office. According to xAI, the company assisted in the arrest, and Harwood had used Grok for months with two accounts to turn ordinary images into sexual images, including a photo of a 10-year-old girl.