Artificial Intelligence

Minnesota's Nudification Ban Could Punish People Over Parodies and Stripped-Down Selfies. Elon Musk's xAI Is Suing

The law is written so broadly it could punish services that let you fake an image of yourself in a swimsuit.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown | 8.5.2026 11:15 AM

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A Minnesota law that took effect August 1 says it's illegal to run a website, app, or software program that lets users "nudify" images. Elon Musk's xAI is challenging the law on First Amendment grounds—and it should win.

When it comes to nudify services, the behavior we want to stop is people using them to nonconsensually "strip" others of their clothes and then share these images in order to harass or embarrass someone or pretend that they have gotten nude in front of you when they have not.

Minnesota's law goes beyond targeting that undesirable behavior and sweeps in any use of artificial intelligence or other software programs to create images of anyone in a less than fully-clothed state.

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It's broad enough to ban even satirical, journalistic, or artistic uses of "nudify" software—a term the state defines so broadly that even depicting someone's inner thigh or a shirtless man would be off limits.

Minnesota's nudify law is also broad enough to ban services from letting people ask AI to nudify themselves or to use it on an image of another person who has consented to that use. It's even broad enough to ban services from letting someone ask AI to generate an image of themself in a bikini.

As Mike Masnick points out at Techdirt, Minnesota's law is written so broadly that it could include a South Park parody featuring a fake video of Donald Trump wandering nude in a desert or even a fake image that Trump himself posted of him, Vance, and others swimming in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

And, no, this law is not simply about stopping AI-generated nudes depicting minors, as Masnick points out. Such images would fall under the federal definition of "child sexual abuse material," or CSAM, and that "is already quite illegal under both state and federal law," notes Masnick. Besides, "nothing in [House File] 1606 is limited to images of minors."

The law, H.F. 1606, states that "a person who owns or controls a website, application, software, program, or other service must not" allow users "to nudify an image or video," nor "nudify an image or video on behalf of a user." It also bans advertising or promoting any nudification service. To nudify is defined as "the process by which: (1) an image or video is altered or generated to depict an intimate part not depicted in an original unaltered image or video of an identifiable individual" when the image is "realistic" enough that "a reasonable person" might not know it was a fake. Intimate parts include "the primary genital area, groin, inner thigh, buttocks, or breast of a human being."

Violating the law can lead to a $500,000 fine per "access, download, or........

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