“Factoring out the deepfake image itself—as it will remain under seal—there is nothing inherently stigmatizing about revealing the fact that a deepfake image was created of South Carolina Doe without revealing the image itself,” the lawyers wrote in one of their May 15 filings. “As a result, this case simply does not involve the types of compelling privacy interests traditionally recognized 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 has specialized in tackling digital abuse, says civil cases where people are ordered to sue using their real names can lead to lawsuits being dropped, creating an “unacceptable and unjust” situation. “Forcing plaintiffs in privacy suits to sue in their names does so little for judicial transparency and so much to deter litigation,” Citron tells WIRED.
All of the four pseudonyms claimants in the case, according to their legal filings on May 29, would consider dropping out of the proceedings if their names had to be revealed. In these most recent filings, lawyers for the claimants say xAI’s request should be denied, adding that the case is about “highly personal and embarrassing deepfakes depicting Plaintiffs that were disseminated without their consent.”
The South Carolina Doe described how they found the alleged deepfake of them “stripped down to a revealing bikini” online and says how it shows her body “in a way that I would not ever share publicly.” They claim they were worried about what employers or colleagues would think if they saw the image, and they feared being further targeted online. “I was also overcome with disgust at the thought of what the individual who had asked Grok to create the deepfake was doing with the photo,” they wrote.
“If I were forced to reveal my name publicly as part of this case, I would fear that those who support Elon Musk, his companies, and Grok, whom I have observed to be very vocal online, would find my name in the public record, disseminate it, dox me, and retaliate against me by creating additional and more extreme deepfakes of me,” the filing says.
Similar statements from the other alleged deepfake victims describe them experiencing “severe emotional distress,” embarrassment, and shock at seeing the images created without their consent. Broadly, other victims of deepfake sexual abuse and nonconsensual imagery have described feeling similar ways.
One male, named as New Jersey Doe in the lawsuit, says they saw people on X using Grok to create sexualized images and posted a request that “Grok not create images of me without my consent.” The next day, the court records say, he discovered two deepfake images of himself, including one depicting him “spreading his butt cheeks.” He says he believed the message to Grok asking it not to create deepfakes of him “brought my account to the attention of online trolls that were using Grok to harass and cause distress.”