“Setting aside the deepfake image — as it will remain under seal — there is nothing inherently stigmatizing about highlighting the fact that a deepfake image of a South Carolina doe was created without disclosing the image,” the lawyers wrote in a May 15 filing. “As a result, this case does not involve the types of compelling privacy interests traditionally identified as requiring pseudonymity.”
Neither xAI nor lawyers representing the company responded to WIRED’s request for comment about the case.
Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who specializes in combating digital abuse, says that in civil cases where people are ordered to sue using their real names, the lawsuits could be dismissed, creating an “unacceptable and unjust” situation. Citron tells WIRED, “Forcing plaintiffs in privacy suits to sue in their own names does little for judicial transparency and does little to deter litigation.”
All four pseudonymous claimants in the case, according to their legal filings dated May 29, would consider opting out of the proceedings if their names had to be revealed. In these recent filings, lawyers for the claimants say XAI’s request should be denied, saying the case is about “highly personal and embarrassing deepfakes depicting the plaintiffs that were disseminated without their consent.”
The South Carolina doe described how she found the alleged deepfake online, in which she was “wearing a revealing bikini” and said how it showed her body “in a way that I would never share publicly.” They claim they were worried about what employers or coworkers would think if they saw the image, and they feared being targeted online. “I’m disgusted to even think what the person who asked Grok to create the deepfake was doing with the photo,” he wrote.
“If I were forced to publicly reveal my name as part of this case, I would fear that people who support Elon Musk, his companies, and Groke, whom I have seen be very vocal online, would find my name in the public record, publicize it, harass me, and retaliate against me by creating additional and more serious deepfakes about me,” the filing said.
Similar statements from other alleged deepfake victims suggest they experienced “severe emotional distress”, embarrassment and shock after seeing images created without their consent. Broadly speaking, other victims of deepfake sexual abuse and non-consensual imagery have described feeling similarly.
In the lawsuit, a New Jersey man named Doe says he saw people on X using Grok to create sexually explicit photos and posted a request that “Grok not create photos of me without my consent.” The next day, court records say, she received two deeply faked photos of herself, one of which depicted her “spreading her cheeks.” He says that he believed the message he sent Grok asking him not to create deepfakes of him, “bringing my account to the attention of online trolls who were using Grok to harass and cause trouble.”
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