xAI v. Bonta: A constitutional clash for training data transparency

Late last year, xAI, which owns and operates the social media website X and the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok, filed a lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta in the Central District of California to enjoin enforcement of AB 2013 "Generative artificial intelligence: training data transparency." The law, which went into effect 1 Jan. 2026, requires developers of generative AI systems that are made publicly available to California residents to disclose a high-level summary of the datasets used to develop such systems. 

Asserting First Amendment, Fifth Amendment and 14th Amendment claims, this lawsuit pits AI transparency against various constitutional protections. While the District Court denied xAI's motion for preliminary injunction, there is much litigation ahead, including an appeal to the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. As such, this case could still set a precedent that invalidates or, at the very least, defangs all kinds of transparency laws across the nation. At present, transparency requirements are core to regulating AI technology as political will to do so otherwise appears to ebb.

The complaint and the contested law

In its complaint, xAI notes the datasets used to develop AI models are oftentimes uniquely curated to confer a competitive advantage upon one model versus another. The company argues that "these datasets are valuable precisely because they are not public." xAI says it works hard to maintain this secrecy through technical controls, arguably making them trade secrets under California and federal law. Accordingly, xAI's complaint describes AB 2013 as "a trade-secrets-destroying disclosure regime" that provides competitors a sneak peek at xAI's proprietary secret sauce while also compelling xAI to speak when it would rather not.