xAI sues South Carolina man over alleged Grok child abuse material

xAI filed a federal lawsuit in Texas against Terry Wayne Harwood, a 67-year-old from Gray Court, South Carolina, alleging he used Grok to create child sexual abuse material and violated the company’s terms of service. The company is asking the court to stop Harwood from using the system and to hold him accountable for a deliberate abuse of its tools.

Harwood had already been arrested on February 26, 2026, and South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced the case on March 9. NCMEC CyberTipline reports led investigators to Harwood. He was charged with three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, second degree, and five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, third degree. Each felony count carried a possible sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta opened an investigation into xAI on January 14, 2026, over reports that Grok had been used to create sexually explicit material without consent. The investigation focused on images and videos depicting women and children.

In a March 31, 2026 snapshot, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said it received more than 1.5 million CyberTipline reports in 2025 with a nexus to generative AI. More than 30,000 of those reports involved users attempting to generate CSAM by uploading images and using text prompts, and more than 7,000 involved users generating or possessing AI-generated CSAM. In April, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley said eight major tech companies submitted more than 17 million CyberTipline reports in 2025 and accounted for 81 percent of all reports received. He also said NCMEC had identified reporting deficiencies and that Meta and xAI had improved their reporting.

xAI said it had suspended 52,222 accounts and made 73,604 reports to NCMEC in 2026, leading to at least 244 arrests. A July 9, 2026 amended class-action complaint alleged that Grok was used to generate about 7,000 sexually explicit images and videos from a single childhood photo.