The Justice Department under the Trump administration has come to the aid of Elon Musk’s xAI in a federal lawsuit challenging Minnesota’s ban on AI nudification technology.
The department filed a Statement of Interest in the case this week, a legal filing that lets the federal government weigh in on a lawsuit without being a party to it.
The filing invokes a December 2025 executive order in which President Donald Trump directed the Justice Department to challenge state AI laws he says burden American innovation.
xAI filed its lawsuit on July 29, three days before the law was set to take effect, court records show.
Minnesota’s law, signed by Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) in May and passed with near-unanimous support in both chambers, went into effect Aug. 1, according to NBC News.
The Justice Department argued in the filing that Minnesota’s definition of protected body parts is broader than federal law allows.
“First, the definition of ‘intimate part’ in HF 1606 is broader than the definition of ‘intimate visual depiction’ under federal law,” the filing said.
Under Minnesota’s law, the brief noted, protected body parts include the “inner thigh” or “breast.”
“[W]hereas HF 1606 would apply to an artificially generated image of a shirtless man in a swimming pool, federal law does not,” the filing said.
The Justice Department also argued the law poses a threat to national security.
“States must be careful not to impose excessive measures that hinder American national and economic security,” the brief warned.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a motion to dismiss xAI’s lawsuit the following day, pointing to Grok’s own record of generating nonconsensual sexual imagery.
In December 2025, Grok generated an estimated 3 million sexualized images in 11 days after xAI launched a photo-editing feature — including roughly 23,000 of children, according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
“With Grok Imagine, X.AI has created an unparalleled marketplace for digital sexual violence that poses virtually no barrier to entry,” the motion to dismiss said.
“That marketplace, coupled with the functional capabilities of Grok Imagine, would doom Minnesota from the start if it could not direct its laws to the technology that makes digital sexual victimization possible in the first place,” the brief continued.
A federal judge denied xAI’s request to pause the law before it took effect and is expected to rule on whether to block it entirely after a hearing on Aug. 19, NBC News reported.
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