A U.S. federal appeals court has temporarily halted Minnesota’s ban on AI-generated fake nude images after Elon Musk’s xAI challenged the law as unconstitutional.
The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted xAI’s request for an injunction on Friday (2 October), putting the law on hold while the company pursues its lawsuit.
The decision came after a lower court rejected xAI’s earlier request to block enforcement.
Minnesota’s “nudification” law, which took effect on 1 August, prohibits website operators, software developers and others from allowing users to create realistic images depicting intimate body parts that are not shown in an original photograph of an identifiable person.
xAI argues the law violates free-speech protections under the U.S. Constitution.
In its appeal, the company also disputed a lower court’s finding that it had waited too long to seek emergency relief. xAI said its Grok Imagine tool has protections designed to prevent the creation of sexualised or “nudified” images of real people.
Minnesota had urged the appeals court not to block the law, saying it was adopted to address the spread of non-consensual sexual images and other harmful AI-generated material.
The state has specifically cited concerns over child sexual abuse material allegedly generated by AI products such as Grok Imagine.
The ruling does not resolve xAI’s underlying constitutional challenge. It temporarily prevents enforcement of the Minnesota law while the legal dispute continues.
xAI has separately sued users it alleges have circumvented Grok’s safeguards to generate sexualised images of people without their consent.
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