Minnesota ban on AI deepfakes raises constitutional…
Minnesota has passed a law banning AI-generated deepfake pornography as xAI faces a class-action lawsuit following the exploitation of five children.
- Incident date
- Jul 2026
- Target
- five children including an 11-year-old girl
On July 31, 2026, legal and constitutional tensions surrounding AI-generated deepfakes reached a critical point as Minnesota enacted a ban on apps designed to create explicit imagery of real people. The legislation, which imposes a $500,000 fine per violation, is currently being challenged by xAI, which argues the law constitutes an overbroad restriction on free speech and visual expression.
What happened
The legislative action follows a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of five children, including an 11-year-old girl and three minors from Tennessee, whose likenesses were used to create deepfake pornography without consent. According to the lawsuit, the stepfather of the 11-year-old girl utilized the Grok chatbot to generate approximately 7,000 sexually explicit images of the child in various poses.
Attorneys representing the families argue that technology companies were aware of the potential for their tools to be used to create child sexual abuse material yet failed to implement sufficient safeguards. While xAI maintains that it prohibits the generation of non-consensual sexualized imagery and employs technological blockers to prevent such abuse, the lawsuit alleges that the company prioritized profit over public safety. As the legal battle unfolds, constitutional experts are debating the government's authority to regulate these emerging technologies, noting that existing laws were not designed to address the sophisticated capabilities of modern artificial intelligence.