X.AI LLC filed a breach-of-contract complaint against Terry Wayne Harwood in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas (Wichita Falls Division) on 14 July 2026. The complaint says he created two xAI accounts on 8 and 10 December 2025 and that a review of those accounts shows that, on numerous occasions between at least 8 December 2025 and 18 February 2026, he uploaded non-sexual images of numerous adults and minors and prompted Grok to alter them, or to create new images and videos, depicting the people in a pornographic or otherwise sexualized manner. It says Grok refused many of these prompts and that he repeatedly submitted altered prompts to circumvent its safeguards, and that some of the images produced involved the likeness of minor children. In the complaint's example, he uploaded a photograph of a fully clothed girl who appeared about 10 or 11 years old and asked Grok to remove her clothing and pose her on a bed; the complaint says Grok refused that prompt and that he tried further variations. The complaint pleads these facts 'upon information and belief' from xAI's own account review.
The South Carolina Attorney General announced on 9 March 2026 that Harwood, 67, of Gray Court, had been arrested on 26 February 2026 by the state's Internet Crimes Against Children task force after CyberTipline reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and charged with three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor in the second degree (distribution) and five counts in the third degree (possession). The release does not mention AI-generated material or Grok; the complaint states that xAI is providing its full cooperation to the criminal proceedings. xAI's complaint also states that it suspended 52,222 accounts and made 73,604 reports to NCMEC in 2026, resulting in at least 244 arrests.
xAI asks the court to declare that Harwood breached its terms of service and acceptable use policy, to order him to indemnify xAI for the cost of defending any claims brought by the people depicted, to award damages, and to bar him permanently from Grok. Coverage noted that xAI was itself defending suits over Grok-generated sexual imagery, including a Tennessee minors' class action and the Ashley St. Clair case, when it sued one of its own users over the same category of output.
This record was first published on 4 August 2026 and withdrawn under a former scope rule that excluded harmful artifacts; it was reviewed and restored under the 2026-09-15 charter on 16 September 2026 with the complaint, the docket, the attorney general's release and three news reports inspected. No depicted person is identified, quoted or counted in any inspected source, and no depicted person's location is known.