8 Dec 2025 to 18 Feb 2026United StatesGrok (xAI image generation and editing)
On 14 July 2026 X.AI LLC sued Terry Wayne Harwood, 67, of Gray Court, South Carolina, in the Northern District of Texas for breach of its terms of service. The complaint says a review of his two Grok accounts shows that 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 into sexualized images and videos, resubmitting altered prompts when Grok refused; one example involved a fully clothed girl of about 10 or 11. Harwood had been arrested on 26 February 2026 by South Carolina's Internet Crimes Against Children task force on eight felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, announced by the state attorney general on 9 March. The people depicted are not identified in any inspected source; the complaint's allegations remain allegations and the criminal charges are pending.
Core concern Court filingCourt docketOfficial statementNews report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: alleged High reported severity Lawsuit Filed Involving minors
Added 04/08/2026
22 Apr 2026 to 10 Jun 2026United StatesGrok / Grok Imagine (xAI) image and video generation, including the marketed 'Spicy Mode'
On 8 June 2026 Bentonville police received a tip about child sexual abuse material being generated online through Grok; the account was registered to a well-known local photographer, and a detective found images of a girl from his summer-camp photography classes that appeared to be AI prompts posing children and removing clothing. He was arrested on 10 June and charged with 100 counts of possessing sexually explicit material involving a child and 100 counts under Arkansas' deepfake and child-exploitation provisions; a hidden folder on his phone held more than 1,700 images and videos, most of prepubescent and pubescent girls, most so realistic the detective could not tell their origin, and more than 60 devices were seized. He pleaded not guilty on 20 July 2026 and is free on a $350,000 bond with home monitoring. Two federal lawsuits against xAI followed in the Eastern District of Arkansas on behalf of a ten-year-old former client (filed 23 July) and a nine-year-old girl (filed 29 July): the first complaint says her parents hired the photographer in spring 2026 for family portraits and were told by police on 10 June that from about 22 April her photographs had been fed into Grok to generate hundreds if not thousands of sexual images and videos, and that thousands more depicted other children; it faults Grok's marketed 'Spicy Mode'. Both plaintiffs filed notices of voluntary dismissal on 15 September 2026; the second notice, the only one read, is without prejudice and says the defendants had not been served, and neither docket shows a return of service. Local reporting says a Benton County state-court suit and a further federal suit were filed in August and that xAI, which says it made the cyber tip, sued the photographer, but those reports could not be read in full. The criminal case continues.
Core concern News reportCourt documentCourt recordPress release AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: alleged High reported severity Criminal Charges Involving minors
Added 03/08/2026
Mar 2026ItalyAI image-manipulation ('deep-nude') programs found on the seized devices, not named
Reports published on 14 March 2026, carrying a Postal Police account of an investigation coordinated by the Catania prosecutor's office, describe the arrest, in flagrante delicto, of a 58-year-old collaboratore scolastico (school assistant) at a secondary school (scuola media) in the province of Catania, on suspicion of possessing a large quantity of child sexual abuse material. The preliminary investigations judge validated the arrest and placed him under house arrest. The investigation began with a report by the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to the Postal Police's national centre in Rome, forwarded to Catania, whose cyber specialists identified the man; a search ordered by the prosecutor found images and videos including child victims and bestiality. Investigators also found on his devices digital photographs of underage female students taken inside the school where he worked, some without the girls' knowledge, which had been altered with artificial-intelligence programs found on the seized devices to make the minors appear naked ('deep-nude') and to place them beside the suspect's own image, as if photographed together. Analysis of the devices continued to establish whether the manipulated images were distributed online and whether there are further victims. The number of students depicted is not reported. No later development was found on 2026-09-22.
Core concern News report AI involvement: reported Causal attribution: alleged High reported severity Criminal Charges Involving minors
Added 14/06/2026
20 Oct 2023 to 16 Oct 2025United StatesClothOff (AI undressing service)
On 16 October 2025, Jane Doe, a New Jersey minor suing through her parents, filed a federal complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey (2:25-cv-16671-ES-JBC) against the operators of ClothOff, an AI 'undressing' service, after ClothOff-generated sexual images of her — created from an ordinary photo of her at 14 — circulated in a Snapchat group when she was 15. The complaint, brought by Yale Law School clinics, alleges the platform was purpose-built to produce hyper-realistic non-consensual intimate imagery and names AI/Robotics Venture Strategy 3 Ltd. (British Virgin Islands), Alaiksandr Babichau and Dasha Babicheva (Minsk), and Telegram as nominal defendant. As of mid-July 2026 the docket shows a continuing effort to serve the foreign defendants by email or publication.
Core concern Court filingCourt docketParty announcementNews investigationNews reportNews relaying wsj AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: established High reported severity Lawsuit Filed Involving minors
Added 10/05/2026
25 Dec 2025 to 14 Jan 2026Event location unknownGrok (image generation and editing on X and the standalone app)
From late December 2025, xAI's Grok image editing on X let users generate sexualized images of real people at industrial scale, including images of named women and apparent minors. Analyses attributed to Genevieve Oh (7,751 sexualized images in one hour, via NBC), the New York Times (4.4 million images in nine days, at least 41% sexualized images of women, via the NC AG), the AP (2% of a 20,000-image sample appearing to be minors, via Fortune) and CCDH (about 3 million sexualized images over 11 days including roughly 23,000 of minors, via Engadget) documented the scale. Named women — Ashley St. Clair, Samantha Smith and Dr Daisy Dixon — described being undressed by Grok and revictimized when they objected. The wave triggered formal actions by Ofcom, the UK ICO, the EU (DSA), Ireland's DPC, 35 US state attorneys general, the California AG, Baltimore (consumer-protection suit), an Amsterdam court order, country blocks in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, and a Paris police raid; xAI restricted generation to paying subscribers on 9 January and narrowed the feature on 14 January 2026.
Core concern News reportNews investigationRegulator announcementWire reportRegulator press releaseCourt docket AI involvement: supported Causal attribution: established Critical reported severity Regulatory Action Involving minors
Added 11/01/2026