Labour MP Jess Asato is taking legal action against Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, after its chatbot Grok was used to generate fake sexualised images of her without consent. The MP for Lowestoft described the experience as humiliating and violating.
Legal Claim Filed at High Court
Ms Asato filed her legal claim at the High Court on Wednesday, naming xAI as the defendant. The case centres on the design of the Grok chatbot, which allegedly enabled users to manipulate images of the MP. She hopes the case will set a precedent for liability in AI system design.
How the Abuse Occurred
Earlier this year, Ms Asato criticised Grok after it was used to create fake sexualised images of women and children. In retaliation, online users manipulated photos of her using the tool, producing a deepfake image of her in a bikini and a video showing her being drugged and prepared for a sexual assault. She also highlighted other victims, including women whose images were turned into deepfake pornography and a Jewish woman whose photo was altered to place her in a bikini at Auschwitz.
Ms Asato told The Mirror: “I am filing a legal claim and taking legal action against xAI, which is Elon Musk's company, which owns and designed Grok, an AI chatbot tool, because people used Grok earlier this year to take images of me from the internet without my consent and turn them into fake sexualised misogynistic pictures and videos, which I found pretty humiliating and violating.”
MP Calls for Safeguards
Ms Asato expressed anger at the scale of harm caused by Grok and what she described as a lack of care from Musk. She said the images were only taken down after she instructed a lawyer, and she is now fighting on behalf of others affected. “Of course not everybody can afford a lawyer to be able to do this,” she said. “These pictures and videos should have never been able to be created in the first place and that's the essence of my case, which is that the tools that are being designed by AI developers like xAI are being designed without the right safeguard to protect women and children.”
She added: “Elon Musk knew that Grok didn't have these safeguards. There had been warnings ever since Grok was created last year that it could be exploited and that users could use it to generate potentially criminal material, but he did not care. He went ahead anyway and I'm bringing this case because I think there need to be guardrails to protect women and children from harm and I know that Silicon Valley says that they want to go fast and break things, but just like any product, if it causes harm, there need to be routes for ordinary people to seek redress.”
Legal Experts Back Action
Ravi Naik, a lawyer from AWO representing Ms Asato, said: “Where there is a wrong, the law must provide a remedy, and that is as true of artificial intelligence as of anything else. No one should be subjected to abuse like this, and no one should have to instruct a lawyer to get images like these taken down. This content existed because of design choices made by engineers at xAI. It is built deliberately. This is one of the first claims to test liability for the design of an AI system, and we aim to make it clear that safety cannot be an afterthought.”
Global Outrage and Government Response
The Grok scandal triggered global outrage earlier this year amid an explosion of sexualised deepfakes on Musk's X platform. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said its analysts had discovered criminal imagery of children created using Grok. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the actions of Grok and X “absolutely disgusting and shameful.” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, who described the images as “weapons of abuse,” made it illegal to create or seek to create non-consensual, intimate images. After widespread pressure, X committed to ensuring full compliance with UK law.
Ms Asato encouraged others affected by the scandal to contact her, saying she hopes her case will open a debate about consent in the online space.
