xAI, the artificial-intelligence company founded by Elon Musk, has brought a federal lawsuit in Texas against Terry Harwood, a South Carolina man who was arrested in February on charges of sexually exploiting minors. The complaint accuses Harwood of misusing xAI's conversational AI system, Grok, to create child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual sexualized imagery.
The complaint, filed on Tuesday, asserts that Harwood violated xAI's terms of service. The company said it enforces its rules through a combination of measures - account suspensions, account terminations, and reporting suspected child sexual abuse material to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children - and quantified its enforcement activity in 2026 to date.
According to the lawsuit, xAI has suspended 52,222 accounts and made 73,604 reports to NCMEC in 2026, which the company says resulted in at least 244 arrests. The complaint frames Harwood's conduct as an attempt to weaponize Grok for criminal ends, saying his actions harmed real victims and exposed the company to legal and reputational risk.
xAI alleges that Harwood uploaded non-sexual photographs of both adults and minors into Grok and attempted to prompt the system to generate sexually explicit deepfakes based on those images. The complaint also alleges that he used the system to create non-consensual sexual imagery of adults.
The company has asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and a permanent injunction barring Harwood from accessing or using Grok. In its filing, xAI wrote: "Defendant's actions were a calculated scheme to weaponize Plaintiff's tool for criminal ends, exposing real victims to profound and lasting harm, while exposing Plaintiff to significant legal risk and reputational damage."
Contact information for Harwood was not immediately available. Spokespeople for xAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The suit arrives amid intensified global scrutiny of Grok over allegations that the system has allowed users to produce non-consensual sexualized deepfakes - realistic-looking content fabricated by AI. xAI's complaint positions the lawsuit as one of the early legal actions by an AI company targeting a user accused of generating explicit material with its technology.
Case status and scope
The filing seeks both damages and a permanent prohibition on the defendant's use of the platform. Beyond the specific allegations against Harwood, the complaint emphasizes xAI's broader enforcement metrics and its cooperation with NCMEC as part of its response to such misuse.
At this stage, the lawsuit documents the company's enforcement activity and the allegations against Harwood; it does not provide additional outcomes beyond the relief sought in court.