A federal appeals court has put Minnesota's ban on "nudification" technology on hold. Nudification means using AI to take a real picture of someone and turn it into a fake nude or sexual image. On Friday, Oct. 2, the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in St. Louis, granted Elon Musk's AI company xAI an injunction pending appeal: an order that stops the state from enforcing the law while xAI's appeal of a lower court ruling goes forward. According to a news report, the order was a single sentence and did not explain the court's reasoning.
Minnesota's law aims at the tools, not only at the people who share the images. From Aug. 1 until the pause, anyone who owns or controls a website, app or other software was barred from letting users nudify an image or video, and from advertising a service that does. Violators face a civil penalty of up to $500,000 for each unlawful use, and a person shown in such an image can sue for damages. Lawmakers passed it 197 to 1, and it was enacted on May 7. Attorney General Keith Ellison has said such apps "have been used to generate child sexual abuse materials and harass people in the vilest ways imaginable." Sen. Erin Maye Quade, the law's chief author, says Minnesota is the only state to cut off access to the technology this way.
xAI sued on July 27, days before the law took effect. It argues that the law violates the First Amendment, calling it an "overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression." xAI also says its image tool, Grok Imagine, has "rigorous protections" against making nude or sexual images of real people. A federal judge in Minnesota refused to block the law on July 31 and again on Sept. 4. In the September ruling, U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank wrote that weighing the harms to each side and the public interest "tips steeply in favor of the State," and found that xAI had waited too long to ask for emergency relief. xAI disputes that it waited too long, according to a news report.
Ellison's office, which defends the law, said it was disappointed and will keep defending it as the appeal goes on, according to a news report. Maye Quade called the order "another devastating reminder of how little the safety of women and children mean to men with money and power." She also said that sharing fake sexual images of people without their consent is still illegal in Minnesota.
The pause is temporary. The appeals court has not said when it will decide xAI's appeal, and because its order gave no reasons, it is not yet clear how the judges view xAI's free-speech argument or whether Minnesota's approach of banning the tools themselves will stand. It is also not clear whether the pause protects only xAI or every app the law covers.