TL;DRA federal judge denied xAI’s bid to block Minnesota’s nudify app ban, letting the first US law of its kind take effect
A federal judge has refused to stop Minnesota’s first-in-the-nation ban on nudification apps from taking effect, denying xAI’s emergency request for a temporary restraining order. Senior US District Judge Donovan Frank ruled that xAI had not shown the law would cause it irreparable harm. The decision clears the way for the ban to land on Saturday, carrying civil penalties of up to $500,000 per violation.
xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota’s attorney general on July 29 to strike down the law on First Amendment grounds. It called the statute “an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression,” arguing it would force Grok to strip back its image-editing features. The company waited nearly three months after the law was signed to file the challenge.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed the bill on May 6 after it passed the state House 132 to one and the Senate 65 to zero. The law bars any site or app from letting users generate realistic fake nude images of a real, identifiable person. It is the first US state to ban nudification technology outright.
