“Releasing the deep photo itself – as it will remain under seal – there is nothing inherently discriminatory about revealing the fact that the deep photo was created in South Carolina Doe without disclosing the photo itself,” the attorneys wrote in one of their May 15 letters.
Neither xAI nor lawyers representing the company responded to WIRED’s request for comment about the lawsuit.
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who specializes in dealing with digital harassment, says civil lawsuits where people are instructed to sue using their real names can lead to charges being dropped, creating an “unacceptable and unfair” situation. “Forcing plaintiffs in privacy lawsuits to sue in their own names does very little for legal transparency and prevents litigation,” Citron tells WIRED.
All four of those who requested anonymity in the case, according to their official requests on May 29, will consider withdrawing from the trial if their names must be disclosed. In the latest filings, plaintiffs’ attorneys said xAI’s request should be denied, adding that the case is “about deeply personal and embarrassing falsehoods featuring Plaintiffs that were distributed without their consent.”
A South Carolina doe has described how she found her private allegations “striped in a revealing bikini” online and says she’s showing off her body “in a way that I can’t share publicly anymore.” They said they were worried about what employers or colleagues would think if they saw the photo, and feared they would be targeted again online. “I was also fed up thinking that this person had asked Grok to deepfake the photo,” they wrote.
“If I am forced to reveal my name publicly as part of this lawsuit, I fear that those who support Elon Musk, his companies, and Grok, who I have seen him talk a lot about online, may find my name in the public record, distribute it, convict me, and retaliate against me by creating more and more extreme deepfakes of me,” the file said.
Similar statements from other alleged victims are serious, with victims describing “extreme emotional distress,” embarrassment, and shock when they see images created without their consent. Broadly speaking, other victims of intense sexual harassment and non-consensual images described feeling in similar ways.
One man, named as a New Jersey Doe in the lawsuit, says he saw people on X using Grok to create porn and posted a request that “Grok not create my images without my permission.” The next day, court records say, he found two fake photos of her, including one showing her “spreading her cheeks.” He says he believes a message to Grok asking him not to create deepfakes about him “brought my account to the attention of online trolls who used Grok to harass and depress.”
