A libertarian law firm has joined Elon Musk's xAI in challenging Minnesota's first-in-the-nation AI "nudification" law, arguing the statute is so sweeping it would punish political satire, superhero fan art, and even images of men without shirts.

The Liberty Justice Center filed a friend-of-the-court brief Friday in federal court backing xAI's bid to block HF 1606, the Minnesota law that took effect August 1 and carries fines up to $500,000 per violation. The brief calls the statute an assault on free expression that "prohibits vast quantities of expressive speech that has nothing to do with protecting privacy," Just the News reported.

The case lands in the middle of a growing collision between state legislatures racing to regulate artificial intelligence and the First Amendment rights of the companies, and ordinary users, caught in the crossfire. An August 19 emergency hearing before U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank, a Clinton appointee who carries a reduced caseload because of senior status, will determine whether the law survives long enough to be enforced.

A definition broad enough to cover Speedos and swimwear

At the heart of the legal fight is what the law means by "intimate part." Minnesota's legislature borrowed its definition from a criminal statute on sexual contact, sweeping in any depiction of an "inner thigh, buttocks, or breast." xAI argues in its complaint that this language would expose the company to massive penalties for generating "benign images depicting individuals in shorts (inner thigh), men without shirts (breast), and competitive swimmers in speedos (buttocks and breast)."

The Liberty Justice Center pressed the absurdity further. Its brief argues the law is so "irrational" that xAI could face a $500,000 fine if a user depicted herself as a partially clothed superhero like "Wonder Woman or the Incredible Hulk", even if the image never left her own computer.

That last detail matters. HF 1606 imposes strict liability. It requires "neither intent, knowledge, nor evidence that an image or video was created or shared with the public." Under the statute's plain terms, xAI could be punished for "an image seen by no one and deleted at once." The law also lacks a safe harbor for platforms making good-faith efforts to remove nonconsensual content, a protection that even the federal lawsuit coverage by the AP flagged as a conspicuous absence.

And the law draws no line between a stranger who generates an explicit image of someone without consent and a person who edits a photograph of herself. Both face the same penalties.

Trump's Reflecting Pool image becomes Exhibit A

xAI's memorandum in support of its preliminary injunction motion included a pointed example: an AI-generated image that President Trump himself shared on social media. The image depicted Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and an unidentified, possibly fictional, woman lounging in the Reflecting Pool in Washington, all wearing swimwear.

xAI called the image "political satire of a familiar kind," a response to critics of Trump's Reflecting Pool makeover. But under HF 1606, the company argued, the image "unlawfully 'nudifies' identifiable individuals because each man's breast is 'depict[ed]' where it was not depicted before."

In other words, a sitting president shared a lighthearted political image, and Minnesota's law would treat the platform that generated it as a potential half-million-dollar offender. The statute makes no exemption for "genuine artistic, political, satirical, journalistic, scientific, educational, medical, or religious value."

Governor Tim Walz, who signed HF 1606 into law, has drawn scrutiny from the Trump administration on other fronts. The administration deported a convicted child sex offender whom Walz had previously pardoned, a decision that raised questions about the governor's judgment on public safety.

State Sen. Quade left out the consent exception on purpose

One of the law's most striking features is what it deliberately omits. State Sen. Maye Quade, the Democratic, Farmer, Labor sponsor of HF 1606, told reporters she "intentional[ly]" left out an exemption for consensual images. That means two adults who agree to use AI tools on their own photos face the same legal exposure as a predator distributing nonconsensual deepfakes.

Quade also sponsored Minnesota's election deepfake ban, another law that has drawn legal challenges. A Minnesota appeals court kept that ban alive only by reading an unwritten parody exception into its text. Federal courts struck down similar election deepfake laws in California and Hawaii.

The pattern is consistent: Minnesota's legislature writes sweeping speech restrictions, and courts are left to either rewrite them or throw them out. The state's ban on prediction markets was blocked in court before it took effect this month as well.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who has faced a criminal fraud referral from Vice President Vance to the Justice Department, filed opposition to xAI's emergency request for a temporary restraining order. Ellison quoted xAI's own admission that Minnesota has an interest in "curbing the non-consensual dissemination of artificially generated nude images."

"Using AI to generate nude images of people against their will is appalling. AI nudification robs the target of their dignity and can cause immense harm on an emotional, personal, and professional level."

That was Ellison's public statement on the lawsuit. But his legal filing, according to the Just the News report, conspicuously omitted the law's sweeping definition of "intimate part" and its lack of a safe harbor, the two features most vulnerable to constitutional challenge.

Liberty Justice Center draws a line from crush videos to AI art

The Liberty Justice Center is best known for its Supreme Court victory against public-sector unions that collected mandatory fees from non-members. It also backed The Babylon Bee, the Christian satire site, in a successful challenge to California's ban on "materially deceptive" memes and parodies of elected officials.

In its amicus brief, the center compared HF 1606 to a federal ban on depictions of animal cruelty, a law Congress originally designed to target so-called "crush videos" showing animals being harmed. The Supreme Court struck down that federal law for reaching far beyond its stated purpose.

The Liberty Justice Center argues Minnesota's legislature was just as "sloppy" as Congress in drafting its ban, but the state law is actually "far more egregious." The federal crush-video law at least limited itself to conduct that was illegal where the image was created, sold, or possessed. Minnesota's AI ban has no such limiting principle.

"Regardless of its motivations, Minnesota's heavy-handed attempt to restrict speech imperils the protected right of millions of Americans to use AI technology to express themselves."

That line from the brief frames the constitutional stakes plainly. Blue-state governors have increasingly turned to legislation as a tool to target political opponents and regulate speech they find objectionable, and HF 1606 fits that pattern.

xAI already bans nonconsensual nudity, the law punishes it anyway

xAI's own corporate policies undercut the argument that the company needs a state law to police its platform. The company's original Acceptable Use Policy, dated January 2, 2025, prohibited "[d]epicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner." On June 26, xAI tightened that language further, banning "[u]ndressing or nudifying real persons, or otherwise altering a real person's image or likeness to depict them in an intimate or sexual context."

xAI's memorandum stated the company "strictly prohibits its users from generating nude or sexualized images of people without their consent." The platform already enforces its own rules. HF 1606 does not reward that compliance, it punishes xAI for any image that falls within the law's sweeping definition, regardless of the company's intent, its policies, or whether the image was ever shared.

President Trump signed bipartisan federal legislation last year criminalizing users who create "revenge porn", a category that includes AI-altered images. That federal law requires platforms to remove such content within 48 hours of a valid request. It targets bad actors, not platforms acting in good faith. Minnesota's law makes no such distinction.

Judge Frank faulted xAI's timing but set a fast hearing

Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI's emergency motion for a temporary restraining order before HF 1606 took effect on August 1. He faulted the company for waiting nearly three months after Walz signed the bill and filing only three days before the law's effective date, stating the delay "implies 'harm is not immediate.'"

xAI did not respond to press queries about the timing. The company filed its lawsuit less than two weeks before the article's publication.

Frank did, however, schedule an August 19 emergency hearing on xAI's motion for a preliminary injunction, a signal that the constitutional questions are serious enough to warrant expedited review, even if the judge was unimpressed by the company's pace. The outcome of that hearing could determine whether other states follow Minnesota's model or treat it as a cautionary tale in legislative overreach.

Courts have a long track record of sorting through the tensions between government power and individual rights, but the AI era is compressing those fights into months rather than years.

Minnesota set out to stop predators from weaponizing AI against real victims, a goal no serious person disputes. But the law Walz signed and Ellison is defending does not target predators. It targets swimwear, satire, and superheroes. When a statute cannot tell the difference between a deepfake revenge scheme and a political cartoon of the president in swim trunks, the law is the problem.