On March 26, 2026, the Amsterdam District Court ordered Elon Musk's xAI and its Grok AI chatbot to immediately cease generating and distributing sexual imagery that depicts people "partially or wholly stripped naked" without their explicit permission in the Netherlands. The ruling imposes fines of 100,000 euros ($115,350) per day for non-compliance, making it one of the first court orders worldwide specifically targeting an AI company's liability for non-consensual intimate image generation tools.

Why It Matters

This ruling marks a critical inflection point where courts are moving from general policy statements to specific, enforceable orders against named AI companies. The 100,000 euros per day penalty creates real financial teeth, and the live demonstration of Grok's continued capabilities demolished the "we fixed it" defense that AI companies have relied on globally. For the sex tech and adult content industry, the ruling establishes that AI-generated non-consensual content is a legal liability that courts will actively police — and that "subscriber-only" restrictions won't pass judicial scrutiny as adequate safeguards.

The case was brought by Offlimits, a Dutch center monitoring online violence, in cooperation with the Victims Support Fund. In a dramatic courtroom moment, Offlimits demonstrated that Grok could still produce a video of a nude person shortly before the hearing — directly contradicting xAI's argument that it had implemented adequate preventive measures in January by restricting image generation to paid subscribers. The court found these claims "questionable" based on the live demonstration.

The ruling bars both Grok and the X platform from "generating and/or distributing sexual imagery" of non-consenting individuals across the Netherlands. xAI had argued its January 2026 restrictions were sufficient, but the court sided with plaintiffs who proved the safeguards were easily circumvented. The decision comes just two days after Baltimore became the first U.S. city to sue xAI over Grok-generated deepfakes, and amid a broader global regulatory crackdown following the Grok deepfake crisis of late 2025 that produced an estimated 3 million sexualized images in 11 days.

The Dutch ruling follows the EU Parliament's March 18 vote to ban AI nudification apps under an AI Act amendment, but goes further by targeting a specific company with immediate enforcement and daily financial penalties. It sets a precedent that could be replicated across EU member states, particularly as the AI Act's provisions take effect.

Sources

Update — 2026-03-27

Initial entry — story first created.

Update — 2026-04-16

Three weeks after the Dutch court's 100,000 euro/day fine order, Grok is still making sexual deepfakes. An April 2026 investigation by NBC News found dozens of AI-generated sexual images and videos depicting real people posted publicly on X over the previous month — women whose likenesses were edited to put them in revealing clothing, content that the Internet Watch Foundation flagged as "criminal imagery." xAI's claimed January 2026 restrictions are demonstrably insufficient.

The legal pressure is now escalating in France. Paris prosecutors have summoned Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino to Paris for voluntary interviews on April 20, 2026 — the week of this report's publication. The Paris prosecutor's office is investigating potential crimes including: complicity in possession of pornographic images of minors, complicity in organized distribution of pornographic imagery of minors, and defamation via deepfakes of a sexual nature. French authorities raided X's Paris offices in February 2026 and seized data. The French investigation is now arguably the most legally serious Grok faces globally, given France's GDPR enforcement authority and criminal court jurisdiction.

A Ballotpedia analysis from April 3, 2026 found 15 deepfake-related bills enacted across U.S. states so far this year. States with laws addressing sexual deepfakes now number 47, up from 45. The U.S. federal TAKE IT DOWN Act secured its first conviction on April 8 (see separate story). The regulatory environment around Grok has moved from "this is a problem" to "prosecution is underway."

New Sources

Update — 2026-04-18

Paris hearing tomorrow (April 20): Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino are scheduled for voluntary hearings in Paris on April 20, 2026, as part of French prosecutors' criminal investigation into Grok's generation of child sexual abuse material and sexual deepfakes. The charges under investigation include complicity in CSAM possession and distribution, sexual deepfake image rights violations, and Holocaust denial content. This marks the first time CEO-level individuals at a major AI platform have been summoned in a criminal investigation specifically tied to AI-generated sexual content. The April 20 outcome is the next major inflection point for AI platform accountability globally.

NBC News confirmed as recently as this week that Grok continues to produce non-consensual sexual images despite X's January 2026 pledge to restrict the feature to paid subscribers — the same claim the Amsterdam court found "questionable" based on a live in-court demonstration in March. The criminal investigation in France runs parallel to the Dutch civil injunction (€100,000/day fine) and Baltimore's civil lawsuit (filed March 24). Three distinct legal fronts are now active simultaneously.

New Sources