Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have accused Elon Musk of putting his company's bottom line ahead of protecting children from "nudification" apps in a statement on their website.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex did not mention Musk by name but called out the "trillionaire leader of the tech company responsible for X’s Grok." Grok is an AI chatbot owned by xAI, whose founder and CEO is Musk.

The couple praised the Minnesota state Senate for passing a law banning apps that use AI to create fake naked or sexualized photos of people and suggested Musk had filed legal action to oppose the ban. The statement also referenced new laws in Pennsylvania, North Dakota and California.

A lawsuit by xAI said Minnesota had the right to prohibit the use of AI to create sexualized images but argued the law went further with a potential impact on free speech and other rights.

Why It Matters

Prince Harry and Meghan have made campaigning against the harms of digital technology a major plank of their social action. Meanwhile, there has been global political tension over the extent to which AI should be regulated by government.

What Harry and Meghan Said About Elon Musk

A statement posted on the couple's Sussex.com website reads: "Big Tech has taken shocking steps to limit restrictions on or accountability for these objectively predatory A.I. product features.

"Most recently, ahead of the Minnesota law to ban "nudification" apps going into effect tomorrow, the trillionaire leader of the tech company responsible for X’s Grok, sued the state of Minnesota to stop the law from going into place."

Musk recently became a trillionaire after SpaceX went public but lost the status shortly afterward, according to data from Bloomberg.

Harry and Meghan's online statement reads: "If one wonders why someone would try to stop a ban on AI technology producing deepfakes of people and children in the nude without their consent, they need look no further than the three different groups, including a UK lawmaker, an Arkansas family, and five children from Tennessee, all filing new lawsuits against that same Grok feature, alleging it created sexual material of them, just this week.

"The company is mitigating risk to their bottom line instead of aggressively responding to the clear evidence their product features are enabling predators to prey on women and children."

While the statement was not signed off by the couple personally, it was posted to the news section of their website, which carries a banner stating it is "The Office of Prince Harry & Meghan, Duke & Duchess of Sussex."

Elon Musk's Lawsuit in Minnesota

Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI filed a federal lawsuit in Minnesota in late July seeking to block a state law aimed at banning the so-called "nudification" technology.

The Minnesota statute, known as HF 1606 and signed into law by Governor Tim Walz, was due to take effect in August. It prohibits apps and websites from allowing users to create AI-generated nude or sexualized images of real people without their consent.

The law also authorizes penalties of up to $500,000 per violation and creates avenues for enforcement by victims and the state attorney general.

According to CBS News, xAI said in its civil complaint that it "does not contest Minnesota's interest in prohibiting the dissemination of artificially generated nude images of real people without their consent." However, it argued the law "extends far beyond that goal" with the potential to effect a "wide array of protected speech to civil liability and government sanctions."

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Matt Cannon and Tony Phillips.