Doe v. X Corp.

Issue: Whether the "produced by force, fraud, misrepresentation, or coercion" exception to 15 U.S.C. § 6851(b)(4)(A)'s commercial-pornography exclusion encompasses a third party's unauthorized copying and reposting of consensually created commercial pornographic content—thereby imposing liability on X Corp. and xAI Corp. for hosting and using that content—and whether § 230(c)(1) independently bars such claims.

Plaintiff, a creator of commercial pornographic content on OnlyFans and studio platforms, alleged that a third party fraudulently obtained his images by violating terms of service and uploaded them to X, which then shared them with xAI for AI model training; Plaintiff sued both entities under the federal NCII statute, 15 U.S.C. § 6851, seeking $150,000 in statutory damages. The court applied the Twombly/Iqbal plausibility standard on Defendants' Rule 12(b)(6) motion and engaged in plain-meaning statutory interpretation, rejecting Plaintiff's argument that § 6851 incorporated § 2257's broader definition of "produces" and holding that "produced" in § 6851(b)(4)(A) means only initial creation, not subsequent copying or uploading. The court further held that § 230(c)(1) independently immunized X and xAI because § 6851 is a privacy-based statute, not an intellectual property law, placing it outside § 230(e)(2)'s narrow IP exception. The court dismissed with prejudice and denied leave to amend as futile.

This decision establishes that platforms sharing user-uploaded content with AI training systems do not face liability under the federal NCII statute for third-party-posted commercial pornography, and it reinforces a narrow reading of § 230's intellectual property exception that preserves broad platform immunity for privacy-based tort claims—potentially shielding AI developers like xAI from statutory damages when they receive content from platform partners rather than directly from tortious actors.