Judge lets Minnesota's nudify-app ban take effect despite xAI lawsuit

Minnesota's first-in-the-nation ban on apps that strip clothing from photos of real people without their consent went into effect August 1 — over the objections of Elon Musk's xAI, which filed a federal lawsuit to stop it and lost the first round.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI's request for a temporary restraining order, according to TechCrunch. His reasoning cut straight to the timing: xAI filed the request on July 29, nearly three months after the law was signed and just three days before it took effect on August 1.

Such a delay in bringing the action and the motion suggests that harm is not immediate.— Judge Donovan Frank, U.S. District Court

The ruling does not end the lawsuit — it only means the law is now in force while the legal fight continues. xAI, which is now part of SpaceX, argues the statute is the first of its kind in the United States and is unconstitutionally broad, according to TechCrunch.

The law was born from a specific, documented harm. Minnesota state Sen. Erin Maye Quade introduced the legislation after learning about a man who used social media photos of more than 80 women he knew to generate sexualized images and videos of them without their knowledge, according to CNBC. The law, signed by Gov. Tim Walz in May, imposes civil fines of $500,000 each time a user creates explicit deepfakes of a real person without consent.

That penalty structure is central to xAI's complaint. Attorneys for the company argued in their filing that a platform whose users generated 100,000 prohibited images could face fines totaling $50 billion — a figure they called 'eye-popping,' according to CNBC and PCMag. They also argued the law goes 'far beyond' its stated goal, exposing 'a wide array of protected speech to civil liabilities and government sanctions,' according to PCMag.

xAI says it already bans users from generating non-consensual nude or sexualized images and has sued at least one Grok user from South Carolina for misusing its tools, according to PCMag. But the company's record on this issue is complicated: Grok previously allowed users to generate sexualized images of real people in lingerie or bikinis without consent until X removed that capability under pressure from multiple global regulators, PCMag reported.

Earlier this year, users of X flooded the platform with non-consensual sexualized imagery generated through Grok, triggering investigations and bans, according to TechCrunch. xAI is also facing a proposed class action lawsuit from plaintiffs who allege Grok was used to create child sexual abuse material from real photos of them, and that the company failed to report alleged perpetrators to authorities, according to CNBC.

There are plenty of worthy debates to have about AI. This is not one of them. AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and could cause them immense harm on many levels.— Keith Ellison, Minnesota Attorney General

It's sad that the creators of nudification technology would rather protect their ill-gotten profits than protect us from image-based sexual abuse.— Erin Maye Quade, Minnesota State Senator

See you in court, creep.— Tim Walz, Minnesota Governor

This is not xAI's first attempt to challenge a state AI law in court. The company filed a similar suit against a California law targeting AI-generated deepfakes in elections, and a federal judge partially sided with xAI, striking down that provision, according to CNBC. That precedent may inform the Minnesota case as it moves forward — but the judge's refusal to pause the law means any business operating nudify tools in Minnesota is already subject to enforcement.

Non-consensual intimate imagery — whether produced by a camera or an AI model — has long outpaced the law's ability to address it. What makes the Minnesota law distinctive is its focus on the tool providers themselves, not just the individuals who misuse them, and the scale of its per-violation penalties. Maye Quade has compared the law's logic to older statutes against peeping toms: the harm is the non-consensual capture and creation of intimate imagery, regardless of the technology used.

Why it matters — The ruling means real people in Minnesota — disproportionately women — gain legal recourse against platforms that enable non-consensual AI nudification starting now, while a First Amendment fight that could set national precedent is only beginning.

Reported by cnbc.com, pcmag.com, techcrunch.com