xAI Sues Photographer, Blaming Him for Sexual Images Created With Grok

Elon Musk’s xAI is suing a prominent Arkansas photographer accused of using Grok to turn photographs of his minor clients into sexually explicit images — arguing that he is responsible for the resulting material.

In June, Russell Bloodworth, a well-known photographer in Bentonville, Arkansas, was arrested for allegedly using AI to create thousands of child sexual abuse images from his images of clients. Bloodworth, who operated a photography business in Bentonville for about 15 years, has pleaded not guilty to more than 200 charges.

According to an affidavit, Bentonville police received a cyber tip from X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) that led them to Bloodworth. A detective investigating the tip found portraits of a girl posing for a professional photography shoot that had been altered using Grok AI with prompts to remove her clothing.

A search of the images found that the original photographs had been taken by Bloodworth for a local school. Police later executed a search warrant at his home and discovered about 1,700 images and videos depicting young girls in sexually explicit situations and various states of undress. Bentonville police say Bloodworth used Grok AI to generate the material, much of it from photographs he had taken of juvenile clients.

According to KATV, Arkansas families are now suing xAI over allegations that Grok was used to alter lawful photographs of Bloodworth’s minor clients into sexually explicit AI-generated images and videos.

Following those lawsuits, Musk’s AI company has now filed its own lawsuit against Bloodworth. In its complaint, xAI claims the photographer violated the terms of service that Grok users agree to and is seeking payment from him as a result.

xAI Blames Grok Users

According to a report by KNWA Fox 24, xAI’s lawsuit against Bloodworth repeatedly describes Grok as “a powerful, neutral generative artificial intelligence tool” and argues that “every response, every image, every generation is the result of the user’s prompts and directions.”

In its lawsuit against Bloodworth, xAI is relying on an indemnification clause in its terms of service, which requires users to cover the company’s costs if their conduct results in legal claims against xAI. The company is asking a judge to order the photographer to pay its legal expenses from defending against the families’ lawsuits, as well as any future lawsuits connected to his alleged conduct. It is also asking the court to permanently prevent him from creating another Grok account.

According to xAI’s complaint, Bloodworth created four Grok accounts in March. The company alleges that between March 30 and April 30, he uploaded ordinary, nonsexual photographs of real people, including minors, and then used “adversarial” prompts to get around Grok’s safety filters until the chatbot generated sexually explicit images. xAI says it identified the activity and reported it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on April 23. According to Musk’s company, that report led to Bentonville police identifying and arresting Bloodworth.

However, Derek Potts, managing partner of the Potts Law Firm — which represents an Arkansas family whose daughter’s likeness was allegedly used by Bloodworth to create child sexual abuse material with xAI — argues that Grok was more open to generating sexual images than other AI platforms. Potts also argues that the company should have had stronger safeguards to prevent people from using the technology to commit serious crimes.

“I think everybody agrees and knows about this platform versus the other platforms that this one is unique, that they marketed themselves as being, quote unquote, rebellious. They marketed themselves as having these additional modes where you could create, they call them spicy images,” Potts tells KATV. “And so they promoted that sort of thing as opposed to some of the other platforms. You need to have some sort of limits, right? You can’t just be completely open-ended so that terrible crimes can be committed using it.”

In August 2025, xAI introduced spicy mode for Grok, which was capable of generating photorealistic nudity. Afterwards, xAI introduced the ability to edit images on Grok and that led to an avalanche of deepfake pornographic images, mostly of women, but some were of children.

Image creditsHeader photo licensed via Depositphotos.