Prince Harry faces royal drama amid return home
USA TODAY’s royal reporter Jennifer Hassan shares the latest on Prince Harry’s return to London amid confusion over his Buckingham Palace stay.
LONDON – Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan are once again taking aim at Big Tech.
The royal couple, issued a scathing statement on their official website, titled: “Can we all agree technology should not enable predators to target children?” which accused tech giants of putting profit ahead of the digital safety of women and young people.
The statement, dated August 2026, began by praising the state of Minnesota for its recent decision to outlaw AI “nudification” technology. The ban passed unanimously in the Minnesota state Senate with a 65-0 vote, becoming the first of its kind nationwide.
Meghan and Harry described the law as “an example of leadership fit for the digital age: a bi-partisan decision to stop technology from enabling predatory behavior disproportionately targeting women and children.”
The royal couple, without naming Elon Musk directly, slammed “the trillionaire leader of the tech company responsible for X’s Grok” for suing the state in a bid to “stop the law from going into place.”
A representative for Musk did not immediately return a request for comment Monday, Aug. 3.
Last week, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, sued Minnesota over the ban and called for the law to be blocked. The legal complaint noted that the state had the right to block AI from being used to create sexualized content but that the law “extends far beyond that goal” and was potentially a violation of freedom of speech.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota told USA TODAY that the final version of the bill needed work.
“While we believe that creating images with AI technology — including sexual images — is protected by the First Amendment, courts have also recognized that the non-consensual creation and dissemination of such material can inflict damage on people appearing in those images, and courts have upheld narrowly tailored regulations under strict scrutiny,” the organization said in an emailed statement. “Laws like this one must address potential harms in a manner consistent with prior court decisions and the First Amendment.
“Minnesota’s version of the bill does not meet the mark,” the statement said.
Meghan and Harry accused xAI of “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.”
Grok has come under widespread scrutiny specifically for its “Imagine” feature, which has been used to create sexualized deepfakes of people without their consent.
“Big Tech companies are raising billions claiming AI will bring society forward, yet they retaliate against basic safety measures to keep children safe,” the Sussexes’ statement said. “Can AI make our world better while it enables the worst in humans? Should our children pay the price while we wait to find out?”
In the Google Play store, xAI touts the Grok product as “designed to be maximally truthful, useful, and curious.”
On Friday, July 31, a federal judge denied xAI’s request to block of the law but said a hearing would be held on Aug. 19 on whether to grant a preliminary injunction, NBC News reported.
Harry and Meghan have long expressed concern over the dark side of social media, along with the rapid development of AI tools. The pair say the issue of online safety is a global humanitarian issue and have spent years calling on platforms to implement better content-moderation policies and bolder online protections.
In 2024, the couple said they had been spending time with families of children who had died or been negatively affected as a result of social media.
“The best parenting in the world cannot keep children safe from these platforms,” a statement from the royal couple, who share two children, read. Their statement came one year after they spoke on a panel in New York about the mental health challenges faced by young people who use social media.
“People are getting hurt – and people, specifically children, are dying,” Meghan said during the panel discussion.
In 2021, Harry blamed social media for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, citing an “avalanche of misinformation” and a and “a barrage of mistruths” that he said allowed conspiracy theories to thrive, threatening democracy with violence and death.
