Nearly three months passed before xAI took a law it branded unconstitutional to court, and the company only asked a federal judge to freeze it 72 hours before it went live. That calendar is precisely what doomed the motion.
Per NBC News, US District Judge Donovan Frank declined to bar Minnesota from enforcing its newly minted statute, which outlaws apps and websites able to produce nonconsensual intimate imagery. Enforcement began Aug. 1.
The dates worked against xAI
Frank saw no immediate injury. He pointed out that the complaint landed on July 29, 2026 — roughly three months after the bill was signed, and merely three days ahead of the enforcement date.
“Such a delay in bringing the action and the motion suggests that harm is not immediate,” the judge wrote.
This was a defeat on procedure rather than substance. Litigation is ongoing, and on Aug. 19 the court will convene a hearing to decide whether xAI gets a preliminary injunction against the statute, which is the first of its kind nationwide.
The developer, not the user, pays the $500,000
What sets this measure apart from the usual state effort at policing synthetic media is where the liability sits. Rather than simply outlawing the tools, Minnesota imposes a $500,000 penalty on developers for each instance in which someone uses their product to create a nonconsensual intimate image.
The scope is tighter than the headline implies. The statute defines a “nudified” image or video as one “altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual.”
It bites only where the output is “so realistic that a reasonable person would believe that the intimate part belongs to the identifiable individual.” Obvious fabrications and cartoons fall outside it; persuasive ones do not.
xAI says it's not defending nudification
In its filing, the firm describes the law as an “overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.'”
xAI rejected the idea that it opposes Minnesota’s push to curb artificially generated nude images of real people. Its position is that the statute “extends far beyond that goal, exposing a wide array of protected speech to civil liability and government sanction.”
The argument is a well-worn one — a legislature targets a genuine harm and sweeps up lawful expression in the process. Aug. 19 will show whether it survives.
Grok’s history is the awkward backdrop
The company frames the dispute as a First Amendment matter, yet the underlying facts trace back to its own product. Grok drew attention earlier this year for complying with requests to turn photos of real women and children into sexualized images.
By mid-January, xAI had rolled out policy changes meant to address the problem. NBC News reports that Grok was nonetheless still undressing real people as late as April.
Three months of remediation, and the conduct continued. Minnesota’s law exists to put a price on exactly that distance between written policy and model behavior — $500,000 per instance — and it is the fact xAI’s attorneys will find hardest to talk their way past on Aug. 19.