The TL;DR is that there is a voluntary system that tracks court cases and will alert CSAM victims when it suspects images of them (either known images, or new ones) are the topic of criminal investigations. A Jane Doe was repeatedly raped in the early 2000’s to produce copious amounts of CSAM, which was broadly shared among pedophile groups. Her images were apparently very popular and prolific. Doe was alerted that Grok was producing new explicit images of her as a child. The images in question are novel (generated by AI, and not matching any known existing images) but are undoubtedly of Doe as a child. Meaning it was using Doe’s images as part of the training data for the images it generates.
Essentially, if Grok was trained on CSAM, Doe’s popular images were almost certainly included. And now Grok is producing new images of her. It would be like asking Grok to make an image of a popular egirl, and getting an image of what is undoubtedly Belle Delphine. And then X goes “no no no, we didn’t use any images of Belle Delphine in our training data. We promise!”
It’s important to note that to produce an AI-generated image of somebody, they do not need to exist in the training data beforehand. You can use an image as a prompt, and an AI can create new works based on that prompt, without ever referencing the person from training materials.
Most of these CSAM files are not readily available on the clearnet, and I don’t think even Elon is stupid enough to let an AI scraper run free on Tor. One would have to go significantly out of their way to locate clearnet sources of CSAM to include into the training data.
Some would say it’s a distinction without difference, but I think it’s important to understand how these AI images are actually created, if you want to adequately legislate them.
Like that article, the actual complaint noticeably leaves some key questions open, while inviting certain conclusions. That these conclusions are not clearly stated as fact makes me fear that the intent is to mislead without lying.
As far as I can tell, the basis for the allegation is that a) CSAM was uploaded to X/Grok and b) the TOS state that uploaded files may be used for training.
Looks like it’s seriously reaching. I hope that poor women isn’t being used by some unscrupulous ideologues. She is heading for trying times regardless.
There was an article the other day saying that Grok used CSAM as training data.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/elon-musks-xai-used-child-porn-to-train-grok-models-lawsuit-says/
The TL;DR is that there is a voluntary system that tracks court cases and will alert CSAM victims when it suspects images of them (either known images, or new ones) are the topic of criminal investigations. A Jane Doe was repeatedly raped in the early 2000’s to produce copious amounts of CSAM, which was broadly shared among pedophile groups. Her images were apparently very popular and prolific. Doe was alerted that Grok was producing new explicit images of her as a child. The images in question are novel (generated by AI, and not matching any known existing images) but are undoubtedly of Doe as a child. Meaning it was using Doe’s images as part of the training data for the images it generates.
Essentially, if Grok was trained on CSAM, Doe’s popular images were almost certainly included. And now Grok is producing new images of her. It would be like asking Grok to make an image of a popular egirl, and getting an image of what is undoubtedly Belle Delphine. And then X goes “no no no, we didn’t use any images of Belle Delphine in our training data. We promise!”
It’s important to note that to produce an AI-generated image of somebody, they do not need to exist in the training data beforehand. You can use an image as a prompt, and an AI can create new works based on that prompt, without ever referencing the person from training materials.
Most of these CSAM files are not readily available on the clearnet, and I don’t think even Elon is stupid enough to let an AI scraper run free on Tor. One would have to go significantly out of their way to locate clearnet sources of CSAM to include into the training data.
Some would say it’s a distinction without difference, but I think it’s important to understand how these AI images are actually created, if you want to adequately legislate them.
Like that article, the actual complaint noticeably leaves some key questions open, while inviting certain conclusions. That these conclusions are not clearly stated as fact makes me fear that the intent is to mislead without lying.
As far as I can tell, the basis for the allegation is that a) CSAM was uploaded to X/Grok and b) the TOS state that uploaded files may be used for training.
Looks like it’s seriously reaching. I hope that poor women isn’t being used by some unscrupulous ideologues. She is heading for trying times regardless.