Her first instinct was to contact the other victims she knew, then “ultimately, local law enforcement was contacted, and a criminal investigation was opened,” the complaint said.

Investigating the Discord evidence, cops quickly determined that the perpetrator had access to the first victim’s Instagram “because he had maintained a close and friendly relationship” with her. Searching his phone, cops found a third-party app that licensed or otherwise purchased access to Grok, which they concluded that the perpetrator used to morph the girls’ photos.

From there, the bad actor uploaded the images to a file-sharing platform called Mega and used them as a “bartering tool in Telegram group chats with hundreds of other users,” trading away the AI CSAM files “for sexually explicit content of other minors.”

The harms to victims have been extensive, the lawsuit said, citing acute emotional and mental distress. For the victims who know the perpetrator, they remain uncertain if the Grok-generated CSAM was shared with classmates or distributed to others at their school, the lawsuit noted. One girl fears the scandal will impact her college admissions, while another feels too scared to attend her own graduation.

Even more alarming than any acquaintances coming across the AI CSAM, however, is the fear that girls will now be stalked due to Grok’s outputs. As the lawsuit explains, “it also appears the victims’ true first names and the name of their school was attached to their files online, meaning other online predators may also be able to identify them, creating a substantial risk for stalking.”

xAI allegedly hosts Grok CSAM

While it was previously reported that Grok Imagine’s paying subscribers were generating more graphic outputs than the Grok outputs that sparked outcry on X, the lawsuit alleges that xAI has also taken other steps to hide how it profits from explicit content that harms real people.