Federal Court of Appeals grants xAI injunction against Minnesota law on deepfakes

The decision was made by a federal appeals court while the company questions the constitutionality of the measure.

The St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals granted a request for a preliminary injunction filed by xAI. Last month, a lower court judge had rejected a similar request made by the company.

The Minnesota law, which took effect Aug. 1, prohibits website operators, software developers and other companies from allowing users to create realistic images that expose private parts of identifiable people without them appearing that way in the original photos.

Federal Judge Donovan Frank ruled last month that xAI had not demonstrated that it would suffer irreparable harm by challenging the law. He also stated that the company had waited too long to request an injunction.

In its appeal, xAI challenged the judge's conclusion that it had delayed filing the lawsuit. The company also stated that its Grok Imagine tool includes “stringent protections” against creating nude or sexualized images of real people.

In the appeal, xAI stated that the Grok Imagine tool has "strict protections" to prevent the creation of nude or sexualized images of real people.

The company also began prosecuting users who, according to it, manage to bypass Grok's security mechanisms to produce sexual images of people without their consent.

Minnesota, in turn, asked the appeals court to uphold the legislation. The state said the measure was created to combat the spread of what it called "a staggering amount of child sexual abuse material generated by AI products like Grok Imagine."