But “such cannot be the case,” Goldberg argued.

Faced with “the implicit threat that Grok would keep the images of St. Clair online and, possibly, create more of them,” St. Clair had little choice but to interact with Grok, Goldberg argued. And that prompting should not gut protections under New York law that St. Clair seeks to claim in her lawsuit, Goldberg argued, asking the court to void St. Clair’s xAI contract and reject xAI’s motion to switch venues.

Should St. Clair win her fight to keep the lawsuit in New York, the case could help set precedent for perhaps millions of other victims who may be contemplating legal action but fear facing xAI in Musk’s chosen court.

“It would be unjust to expect St. Clair to litigate in a state so far from her residence, and it may be so that trial in Texas will be so difficult and inconvenient that St. Clair effectively will be deprived of her day in court,” Goldberg argued.

Grok may continue harming kids

The estimated volume of sexualized images reported this week is alarming because it suggests that Grok, at the peak of the scandal, may have been generating more child sexual abuse material (CSAM) than X finds on its platform each month.

In 2024, X Safety reported 686,176 instances of CSAM to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which, on average, is about 57,000 CSAM reports each month. If the CCDH’s estimate of 23,000 Grok outputs that sexualize children over an 11-day span is accurate, then an average monthly total may have exceeded 62,000 if Grok was left unchecked.

NCMEC did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment on how the estimated volume of Grok’s CSAM compares to X’s average CSAM reporting. But NCMEC previously told Ars that “whether an image is real or computer-generated, the harm is real, and the material is illegal.” That suggests Grok could remain a thorn in NCMEC’s side, as the CCDH has warned that even when X removes harmful Grok posts, “images could still be accessed via separate URLs,” suggesting that Grok’s CSAM and other harmful outputs could continue spreading. The CCDH also found instances of alleged CSAM that X had not removed as of January 15.