The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted xAI's request for an injunction on October 2, halting Minnesota's first-in-the-nation ban on AI-generated fake nude images while Elon Musk's company pursues its constitutional challenge — reversing a lower court judge who had rejected the same bid.
The St. Louis-based appeals court put the law on hold for now, granting xAI's request for emergency relief. A lower court judge, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank, had ruled last month that xAI had not shown it would suffer irreparable harm while challenging the law and said the company had waited too long to seek emergency relief. In its appeal, xAI disputed the judge's finding that it delayed bringing suit.
Minnesota's anti-"nudification" law, which took effect on August 1, prohibits website operators, software developers and others from allowing users to create realistic images depicting an intimate body part that is not shown in an original photo of an identifiable individual. The statute allows the attorney general to seek civil penalties of up to $500,000 for each violation, in addition to injunctive relief and other remedies. It was the first state law of its kind targeting the AI tools that generate nonconsensual sexualized imagery.
xAI alleges the measure restricts free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution and exposes a wide array of protected expression to liability. The company says its Grok Imagine tool includes "rigorous protections" against creating nudified or sexualized images of real people, and that its policies bar users from engaging in illegal or harmful activity, including the nudification of a real person's image or creating content that sexualizes or exploits children. xAI has also begun suing users whom it alleges are evading Grok's technological blockers to create sexual images of people without their consent. The company filed its challenge on July 27.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison's office said it was disappointed by the appeals court ruling and vowed to keep defending the law as xAI's appeal moves forward. "Minnesota's nudification ban outlaws AI technology products from generating sexual images that harm and harass people in the vilest way possible," spokesperson John Stiles said. The state's defense leans heavily on concerns over AI-generated child sexual abuse material — and xAI is facing several lawsuits alleging images of children were used to create such material through Grok Imagine.
The case, xAI LLC v. Ellison, now sets up one of the first major appellate tests of how the First Amendment applies to generative AI image tools. With other states watching closely, the 8th Circuit's eventual ruling on the merits could shape the national regulatory landscape for "nudification" technology — and for the broader fight over who bears responsibility when AI is used to harass and humiliate.