MINNEAPOLIMEDIA NEWS | Federal Appeals Court Blocks Minnesota's AI “Nudification” Ban While xAI Constitutional Challenge Continues

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has temporarily halted enforcement of Minnesota's new prohibition on AI services that allow users to create realistic fake nude images, reversing the immediate effect of a September district-court decision that had allowed the law to remain in force.

ST. PAUL, MN (October 4, 2026).

Minnesota's first-in-the-nation attempt to prohibit artificial-intelligence services from enabling users to create realistic fake nude images has been temporarily blocked by a federal appeals court, handing xAI an important procedural victory while leaving the underlying constitutional dispute unresolved.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday granted xAI's request for an injunction pending appeal, preventing Minnesota from enforcing the challenged law against the company while litigation continues.

The appellate court's action does not resolve whether Minnesota's law ultimately violates the First Amendment. It determines that enforcement will be halted during the current stage of the litigation.

Minnesota's law took effect August 1. It prohibits owners or controllers of websites, applications, software and similar services from allowing users to use those products to “nudify” images or videos, including creating realistic depictions of intimate body parts that were not shown in the original image of an identifiable person.

The law represents Minnesota's attempt to confront one of the most troubling uses of generative artificial intelligence: producing sexually explicit or intimate images of real people without their consent.

xAI, which operates the Grok artificial-intelligence service, sued Attorney General Keith Ellison in federal court, arguing that the statute violates constitutional free-speech protections.

Until Friday, Minnesota had prevailed in the early stages of that fight.

U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank denied xAI's request for a preliminary injunction on September 4. The federal district court had also previously declined to issue a temporary restraining order before the law took effect. The September ruling meant Minnesota could continue enforcing the statute while the case proceeded.

Friday's appellate action changes that immediate legal landscape.

The Eighth Circuit did not, through the order granting the injunction, provide a final determination that Minnesota's statute is unconstitutional. The merits of xAI's First Amendment challenge remain to be decided.

That distinction is important because an injunction pending appeal and a final judgment answer different questions. Minnesota has lost the ability, for now, to enforce the challenged restrictions against xAI while the appellate litigation proceeds, but the state has not yet lost the underlying lawsuit.

The case places two significant interests into direct conflict.

Minnesota argues that the government has a legitimate responsibility to prevent technology companies from facilitating nonconsensual sexually explicit images and AI-generated sexual material involving identifiable people. xAI argues that the statute regulates constitutionally protected expression too broadly and therefore violates the First Amendment.

The outcome could reach well beyond Minnesota. States across the country are confronting deepfakes, AI-generated sexual imagery and rapidly improving tools capable of producing realistic fabricated photographs and video. A significant appellate ruling defining how far a state can go in regulating the companies that provide those tools could influence legislation elsewhere.

For now, Minnesota's enforcement authority has been curtailed while the Eighth Circuit considers xAI's appeal.

The legal fight is therefore no longer simply about whether Minnesota can punish harmful AI-generated imagery. It is also becoming a test of how traditional First Amendment principles apply when software can generate intimate fabricated images of identifiable people in seconds.

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