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The new Minnesota law that would ban apps and websites that can generate nonconsensual intimate imagery can take effect today, after xAI's last-minute effort to stop it from being enforced failed to convince a federal judge. According to NBC News, US District Judge Donovan Frank has refused to grant xAI's request to stop the new law from being enforced on August 1 in a complaint arguing that it violates the First Amendment.
Based on the judge's order, he wasn't persuaded by xAI's actions that the law's enforcement would cause immediate harm. He noted that xAI filed the lawsuit on July 29, 2026, almost three months after the law was signed and merely three days before it was set to take effect. "Such a delay in bringing the action and the motion suggests that harm is not immediate," the judge wrote.
While Judge Frank didn't side with xAI this time around, the lawsuit will still push through. The court will hold a hearing for the case on August 19 to decide whether to grant xAI's request to put a preliminary injunction on the Minnesota law, which is the first of its kind in the country.
In addition to banning apps and websites that can generate adult AI deepfakes in the state, the law would also fine developers $500,000 every time a user generates a nonconsensual intimate image using their products. Under the law, a "nudified" image or video is something that has been "altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual." It will apply to instances wherein an altered image or video is "so realistic that a reasonable person would believe that the intimate part belongs to the identifiable individual."
However, xAI argued in its lawsuit that the law was an "overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit 'nudification.'" The company denied that it was contesting Minnesota's efforts to prevent the spread of artificially generated nude images of real people. However, it said the law "extends far beyond that goal, exposing a wide array of protected speech to civil liability and government sanction."
Grok gained infamy earlier this year for complying with people's requests to transform photos of real women and children into sexualized images. It implemented policy changes to address the situation by mid-January, but NBC News says Grok has still been undressing real people as recently as April.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 05, @02:15PM
It is one of those things, though. There is an idea there, held on to past all reasonable bounds.
If you simplify the world to a frictionless sphere in a vacuum, money can be spent in two ways: satisfying your own needs and desires, or buying equipment to improve productivity. We want a system that rewards the latter with more money to invest and further increase production. With the intent that there's just more to go around afterwards.
But we don't live in that frictionless world. We live in a world where Elon got rich by way of government contracts for his space company, government subsidies and outright banning of comparable cars that cost a third as much at his car company. A world in which rigging financial metrics enable outright fraud. A world where abusing the network effect allows de facto monopoly power in communication with your friends. A world in which it is far more profitable to invest in manipulation and gambling than increased productivity in manufacturing.
The things you optimize for to get rich are totally at odds with the nominal reason why being rich should have positive value.