March 24 (Reuters) - The city of Baltimore sued Elon Musk's xAI on Tuesday, claiming its Grok chatbot illegally generates nonconsensual sexually explicit images, including of children.

Baltimore, with a population of about 568,000, is the largest city to sue xAI over "deepfakes" attributed to Grok, its lawyers said.

Musk launched Grok in 2023 and distributes it through his social media platform X, which like xAI is now part of his rocket and space exploration company SpaceX.

Neither SpaceX nor xAI immediately responded to requests for comment.

The Maryland city said in a complaint filed in Baltimore Circuit Court that xAI is violating its consumer protection statute by promoting Grok as a safe, general-purpose artificial intelligence assistant for everyday people.

Baltimore said Grok has flooded X users with objectionable content, becoming one of the largest distributors of material depicting nonconsensual sexual activity and child sexual abuse despite promising it bans such content and permits only consensually produced adult nudity.

The city also said X, formerly known as Twitter, generated an estimated 3 million realistic-looking sexualized images --including more than 23,000 of children -- over 11 days around the start of the year.

"We're talking about tech companies enabling the sexual exploitation of children," Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement. "It's a threat to privacy, dignity and public safety, and those responsible must be held accountable."

REGULATORS IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES PROBING GROK

Musk's xAI faces regulatory probes in several countries in the Americas, Europe, Asia and in Australia over Grok.

In mid-January, xAI said it restricted image editing in Grok, and blocked users from generating images of people in revealing clothing in "jurisdictions where it's illegal."

Musk said at the time he was "not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok. Literally zero."

The complaint includes a Grok-generated image that Musk shared on December 31, 2025, depicting the 54-year-old in a blue string bikini. Baltimore called it a "public endorsement" of Grok's ability to generate revealing edits of real people.

The 3 million estimate came from the Center for Countering Digital Hate, based on a random sample of 20,000 images that Grok generated.

Baltimore is seeking an injunction requiring xAI to change Grok's "exploitative" design features, and pay unspecified fines.

Last month's combination of SpaceX and xAI created the world's most valuable private company, worth about $1.25 trillion at the time.