a complaint filed<\/a> in the US District Court for the District of Minnesota on 27 July and seen by ICLG News, xAI seeks declaratory and injunctive relief preventing enforcement of House File 1606, which is due to take effect on 1 August. The company argues the law violates the First Amendment by imposing what it describes as an \u201coverbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression\u201d while exposing AI providers to civil penalties of up to $500,000 for each offending image.<\/p>\nxAI has made clear that it does not oppose efforts to tackle non-consensual AI-generated intimate images. However, the company says it already prohibits users from creating nude or sexualised images of real people without consent, has deployed extensive technical safeguards and has even sued users who circumvented those protections.<\/p>\n
First Amendment<\/p>\n
Instead, xAI argues Minnesota has gone much further by targeting the AI tools themselves rather than the harmful misuse of those tools. \u201cThe First Amendment protects against laws that target speech because of what is communicated,\u201d the complaint states, adding that Minnesota\u2019s law \u201cflouts these foundational First Amendment principles\u201d because it is \u201ccontent-based and vastly overinclusive\u201d.<\/p>\n
The legislation prohibits companies operating websites, applications or software from allowing users to create realistic AI-generated images depicting an \u201cintimate part\u201d of an identifiable individual.<\/p>\n
According to xAI, however, the statute borrows an unusually expansive definition of \u201cintimate part\u201d from Minnesota\u2019s criminal sexual contact legislation, covering not only genitalia but also body parts including the inner thigh, buttocks and breasts. The complaint argues this would capture countless innocuous images that ordinary people would never regard as nudification.<\/p>\n
\u201cHF 1606 accordingly bans ordinary depictions of men without shirts, people in shorts or swimsuits, and other body parts routinely displayed in public \u2013 far beyond what an ordinary person would consider \u2018nudification\u2019,\u201d the company claims.<\/p>\n
Political satire<\/p>\n
To illustrate the point, the complaint reproduces several AI-generated images, including political satire depicting President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk shirtless, alongside humorous images of politicians engaged in a sumo wrestling match. xAI argues all could fall within the legislation despite having no connection with sexually explicit content.<\/p>\n
The complaint goes on to attack what xAI describes as the law\u2019s strict liability regime. The company argues liability arises whenever a user successfully creates a prohibited image, irrespective of whether the provider prohibited such use, deployed sophisticated moderation systems or acted diligently to prevent abuse. \u201cThere is no safe harbor for good-faith efforts of the provider of general-purpose AI creative tools to avoid harms,\u201d the complaint states. \u201cLiability attaches even if the depicted persons consented \u2013 or created the image themselves \u2013 and even if the image is never shared.\u201d<\/p>\n
The complaint also criticises the absence of any requirement that the image be distributed. Under the legislation, xAI argues, a single image viewed only by the person who created it could attract the same penalties as one disseminated all over the world.<\/p>\n
Financial exposure<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most eye-catching allegation concerns the potential scale of financial exposure. Because penalties apply to each individual image, xAI says a company whose users generated 100,000 prohibited images could theoretically face civil penalties totalling $50 billion, in addition to private lawsuits seeking treble damages, punitive damages and legal costs.<\/p>\n
The company also argues Minnesota already possesses alternatives to the new law, citing existing state legislation criminalising the knowing dissemination of non-consensual deepfakes and the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act, both of which require dissemination, knowledge and lack of consent before liability arises. However, HF 1606 applies regardless of whether the subject consented, whether the provider knew about the image or whether it was ever shared.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Seeking declarations that the law is unconstitutional, xAI contends the legislation forces it to disable image-editing features for Minnesota users despite its existing safeguards. It argues that \u201cprotected speech freely available before the law takes effect will thus be chilled\u201d unless the court intervenes.<\/p>\n
The parties<\/p>\n
In xAI (claimant) v Keith Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota (defendant), the claimant is represented by Todd Noteboom, Andrew Leiendecker and Sarah Almquist of Stinson, and Robert Dunn of Eimer Stahl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Company argues statute criminalises protected speech by imposing strict liability on AI developers regardless of consent, knowledge or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[25,63145,58337,63146,2899],"class_list":["post-125852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-xai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-eimer-stahl","tag-nudification","tag-stinson","tag-xai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}