MP sues Elon Musk after AI device created ‘humiliating’ photos of her in bikini
EXCLUSIVE: Labour MP Jess Asato who was left ‘humiliated’ after an AI tool was used to strip photos of her and put her in a bikini is suing Elon Musk’s tech company
Elon Musk came under fire after his xAI chatbot Grok was used to create fake sexualised images of women and children(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
A Labour MP who was “humiliated” after an AI tool generated fake images of her in a bikini is suing Elon Musk’s tech company.
Jess Asato was targeted earlier this year after criticising the chatbot Grok, which was being used to create fake sexualised images of women and children.
Online users manipulated photos of her using the tool, which is operated by xAI, making a deepfake image of her in a bikini and a video showing her being drugged and prepared for a sexual assault.
The MP for Lowestoft – who has long worked on tackling violence against women and girls – also highlighted other horrific cases including some women’s images being used to make deepfake pornography or a photo of a Jewish woman being manipulated to put her in a bikini in 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.”
She said she was “incredibly angry” seeing the scale of Grok’s harm and the lack of care from tech billionaire Musk. She hopes her legal action will help to bring other victims’ “voices into the light” and encouraged people affected by the scandal to contact her.
Ms Asato said the AI images made of her were only taken down after she instructed a lawyer to take action – and now she is fighting on behalf of others too. “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.
“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.”
Ms Asato’s legal case was filed at the High Court on Wednesday, with xAI as the Defendant. The claim centres on the design of the Grok chatbot enabling manipulation of images of the MP. If successful, the case will set a precedent for liability for the design of an AI system.
Ms Asato added that she hopes her case will also open up a debate about “what consent means in the online space”.
Ravi Naik, a lawyer from AWO who is 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. Ms Asato MP has shown real courage in stepping forward.”
The Grok scandal triggered global outrage earlier this year amid an explosion of sexualised deepfakes on Musk’s X.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), a child sexual abuse watchdog, said its analysts had discovered “criminal imagery” of children aged which appeared to have been created using Grok.
Keir Starmer told MPs at the time: “The actions of Grok and X are absolutely disgusting and shameful.” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, who said images made by Grok were “weapons of abuse”, made it illegal to create or seek to create non-consensual, intimate images.
After widespread pressure, X committed to taking action to “ensure full compliance with UK law”.
