AI Nudify Apps: Elon Musk’s xAI Sues Minnesota (and California)

Elon Musk is suing Minnesota over their anti-AI-nudification app ban passed in April, which took effect August 1 of this year. Minnesota’s response?“See you in court, creep.”TRIGGER WARNINGS: Sexual assault, sexual abuse material, suicide, and other sensitive and heavy topics are discussed.In the span of 9 days as reported by NYT in January, Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok, generated and posted 4.4 MILLION images, of which 41% were sexualized images of women.Millions of nudified images of people, real or fake, including children, are generated by AI chatbots like Grok. Users can do anything from uploading an image of a real person to describing one to prompt generative AI to create realistic images of people without clothes.A major story this past year about this came through when a female politician, Jess Asato, Member of Parliament of the UK, after posting on X about deepfakes, received thousands of comments on her post with people asking Grok, in the comment, to take off her clothes. Grok’s subsequent generated images of the politician, in varying degrees of undress, posted alongside the prompt’s text in these comments.Beyond the onslaught of AI-generated nude images of women, of the most concerning parts about AI-generated nudity is how many of these images are of children.The public and policymakers alike are calling en masse for something to be done about this. Ban AI, ban generation of nude images, ban them being posted - essentially, take them down or ban them from being generated entirely.Recently, something HAS been done about this by Minnesota, which passed a law in April, signed in May, aimed at banning AI generation of nude images, or “deepfakes.”Elon Musk and his company behind Grok, the source of many of these nude deepfakes, had something to say about it.xAI, which owns Grok on X, filed a lawsuit against Minnesota, stating that this anti-nudification law was…unlawful and should be put to rest.Why were they against it?0:00 Elon Musk is suing Minnesota over their new law aimed at eliminating AI nudify apps04:21 What was in the AI-generated, nonconsensual intimate images law that Minnesota passed?06:40 Musk calls the sexual deepfakes law a “clumsy attempt” in a complaint filed to Attorney General09:54 Cue us trying to understand what xAI is trying to do with this complaint and lawsuit: breaking down the arguments of this complaint. Consent?20:41 Should we target social media companies instead of generative AI ones, requiring them to take down nude images that are posted to their platforms? Take It Down Act22:48 Meta is facing a massive fine for having hosted advertisements containing child sexual abuse material23:13 What is Musk's / xAI's intent with this complaint filed against Minnesota? Free speech violations25:46 Should we prevent AI applications from being released before they have appropriate guardrails and tests proving they mitigate user harm and abuse? Watermarks for AI-generated content and New York’s required AI watermarks on StreetEasy28:36 San Francisco government sends cease and desist to Apple and Google telling them to delete their AI nudity apps off their app stores. …Did it work? Independent research on the market for AI nudity (AKA “face swapping”) apps are discussed. About AI-generated CSAM: Parents, beware. High schools, beware.33:34 So…what can you do? For users, parents, high schools, minors and more This is Our Lives With Bots, the show where we ask important, timely questions about what it means to live with our bot counterparts. From time to time, we also dive deep into what an AI future might look like for us. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we spiral, but we always go deep.Rose & Angy are psychologists with degrees in psychology, artificial intelligence, and ethics. They have conducted research in human-AI interaction and created this podcast to make information about AI accessible to you. Links:San Francisco AI nudify appsMinnesota anti-nudification lawCNBC