this post was submitted on 28 Aug 2026
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Elon Musk’s xAI used child porn to train Grok models, lawsuit says (arstechnica.com)
submitted 23 hours ago by technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
90 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

For her safety, Doe has opted to receive alerts from the US Department of Justice Victim Notification System any time she may be a victim in a new criminal investigation. Although she has received countless alerts, she was shocked when the CCCP notified her that it had identified AI-generated CSAM on xAI that depicted her. This re-traumatized Doe, whose complaint alleged that messages were found on online forums “between offenders chatting about creating AI generated CSAM of Plaintiff and other similarly situated known, legacy, victims of CSAM.”

Now, Doe fears that xAI has not only made it easier to make more violative images of the most distressing time in her life, but also that xAI allegedly has stored the images that Grok generates and uses those outputs to further train Grok. Because of this, she believes that Grok has been trained on both the initial set of images that have haunted her for more than 20 years and the more recent AI-generated ones.

This is the first case to accuse xAI of training on CSAM, and the complaint does not go into great detail on that claim. Previously, Ars reported on a controversial dataset that was later scrubbed after researchers found CSAM in the training data, but there’s no indication xAI trained on that data. In a press release from lawyers representing Doe, it explained that Doe’s images were included in a CSAM Hash List maintained by NCMEC, and “that same material” allegedly “was part of the dataset xAI used to build Grok’s image and video generating capabilities.” The complaint similarly only alleged that “CSAM depicting Plaintiff with its longstanding well-known hash values has been used as a part of the dataset used by xAI.”

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[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 9 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

If x or any other company downloaded CSAM everyone in the company should be arrested.

I assume you cannot possibly mean that as written, right?

I'm absolutely for arresting anyone who was involved with this, or had knowledge that it was happening. But we're obviously not talking about going after Jane the intern here, right?

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 5 points 16 hours ago

I won't say everyone. I've actually been at a company who was investigated (not for CSAM, but other things that happened). I had no idea it even happened, and luckily was not involved with any of it. So for me no, I wouldn't have wanted that. That being said 2 things, say I had been in the position. If our scraper was downloading it and it was my scraper, damn right I would have flagged it to legal, HR, and everyone I could have, along with writing some way to prevent it, and written everything down in a complete log (off company computer). If it wasn't stopped immediately I would either quit, whistleblowed, or happily talked with anyone raiding and making sure any of the decision makers were hauled off. I don't blame someone for being lowest level at a shit company, been there. (Although I will say, xAI, come on, no one is "stuck" there, but that doesn't mean that Dave the brand new intern out of college should be hauled off). Who I blame are the suits who were probably told it was happening and chose to ignore it, and any engineer I do blame if they knew about it and chose not to do one of the above.

As an engineer I've had my fair share of let's say... challenges that I've had to morally grapple with. Things I've been asked to do that may not be moral. However, there's a pretty wide chasm between "Implement this dark pattern so people won't unsubscribe" and "host this and don't tell anyone"

[–] CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world -1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

If you started a company that made CSAM do you think you and every one involved should be let off, because you claim it was a technological oopsie?

People have been pointing out that xAI is a CSAM machine since basically the first day it came out. And when they basically said they don’t care. All the employees that stayed are all accomplices to the crimes… let alone the people who started working there after.

The only way to stop these companies is to start holding people accountable. And they will never hold the people at the top to account.

So make it hurt for everyone involved and then people will think twice before they sign up to do evil deeds for evil people.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

But you didn't say "The people at the top", you said "Everyone." I think you need to take a moment to figure out what you're actually arguing for here.

Again, I would happily see anyone who had knowledge of this arrested. They either supported it, or knew of it and said nothing. And yeah, we can throw in anyone who maintained wilful ignorance too. If that includes Elon himself, so much the better. We already know the dude is a fucking pedophile, maybe this is how they'll finally nail him.

But if you're arguing for arresting the cafeteria lunch guy over this, that is an insane position to hold.

So which is it?

[–] CorneliusTalmadge@lemmy.world -1 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I have been thinking about it and I agree it’s an extreme position.

But these deeds are not being done by one person. And at some point whether you are an active participant or not you are continuing to work there so you have some level of complicity.

[–] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

If you came into work today to find your building full of feds packing up evidence, because it turned out that, entirely unbeknownst to you, five members of the C-suite had been running a child sex ring, would you consider yourself "complicit"?