A judge denied xAI's bid to block Minnesota's 'nudify' ban, partly because it waited
US District Judge Donovan Frank refused a temporary restraining order on 29 July, three days before the law took effect. His reasoning turned in part on timing: the delay in bringing the action suggested the harm was not immediate.
The procedural point is the transferable one. A TRO requires irreparable and imminent harm, and a company that waits until days before a statute takes effect has made an argument against its own urgency without saying a word.
That means the ruling settles very little about the substance. The constitutional questions around synthetic intimate imagery statutes are untouched; what was decided is that xAI did not establish the emergency it asked the court to relieve.
It fits a wider pattern in which courts are declining to move quickly on AI, which is exactly why the legislative traffic matters more than the litigation. Over two thousand proposals are in flight and the courts are, so far, mostly waiting.
TechCrunch — Judge denies xAI's request to block Minnesota ban on nudify apps → · Lawfare — Don't count on courts to rein in unregulated AI →