(The Center Square) – Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI is challenging a Minnesota law that restricts access to technology used to “nudify” images in the state.
The law is set to take effect Saturday. xAI filed the lawsuit earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.
The lawsuit alleges that Minnesota’s law is too broad and violates the First Amendment’s right to freedom of speech.
“The statute Minnesota enacted extends far beyond that goal, exposing a wide array of protected speech to civil liability and government sanctions,” it said. “The statute contains no knowledge, intent, or purpose requirement. It is a strict-liability statute keyed solely to whether a user succeeded in creating a covered image using the AI provider’s platform.”
HF 1606, a first-in-the-nation law, was passed nearly unanimously in the spring legislative session. It received only one vote against it in either chamber.
Rep. Jessica Hanson, DFL-Burnsville, was the House author of the bill. She responded to xAI’s lawsuit.
“It’s absolutely disgusting that Elon Musk and his xAI are fighting a law designed to protect children from sexual exploitation,” Hanson said. “Nudification is simply an indefensible tool of AI. As the use of AI continues to grow, so does its potential harms, with nudification features being among the most urgent to address – and that’s exactly why we banned them in Minnesota.”
xAI did not respond to a request for comment from The Center Square by publication.
The law prohibits operators of websites, apps, software, and other services from allowing users to create realistic “nudified” images or videos of identifiable individuals or creating those images on users’ behalf.
“Nudify” means to digitally alter or generate an image or video to realistically depict a person as nude when they were not nude in the original image.
“Nudification’s victims are overwhelmingly children and women,” Hanson said. “Child sexual abuse material has surged by 26,000% due to this tool, with fake nude images devastating lives . . . This is what happens when corporations think they can do whatever they want to make a profit. They’re enabling the sexual exploitation of children for their own greed.”
The bill also prohibits advertising or promoting such services. It also lays out penalties for breaking this law, which include:
• Allowing affected individuals to sue for damages
• Authorizing attorney general enforcement and civil penalties of up to $500,000 per violation
The bill exempts services that require “the technical skill of a user” to create the altered image or video.
The lawsuit argued that the penalties were too steep and that the law improperly targets platforms rather than the individuals creating the images or videos, while also asserting that existing federal law already provides protections against such conduct.
“A business whose users created a hundred thousand images covered by HF 1606 (not at all unlikely for a publicly available program with millions of users generating billions of images) could owe an eye-popping $50 billion dollars,” it said. “In 2026 alone, xAI has suspended over 50,000 accounts and made over 70,000 reports . . . which have resulted in (at least) 244 arrests.”
xAI is asking for the court to declare the law unconstitutional and prevent enforcement of its provisions. It is also seeking reimbursement from the state of Minnesota for all legal fees related to the lawsuit.
“HF 1606 flouts these foundational First Amendment principles,” the lawsuit said. “ It is content-based and vastly overinclusive: it bans protected non-sexual, consensual, and non-disseminated speech that has no connection to any legitimate interest in preventing distribution of nonconsensual nude images.”
Hanson pushed back on that.
“I look forward to hearing Elon Musk trying to explain to the public exactly the redeeming qualities he thinks nudification has and why it’s important for him to undermine these critical protections,” she said. “In court, Minnesota Attorney General Ellison is going to fight like hell to uphold this new law.”
