Lowestoft MP Jess Asato has filed legal papers at the High Court against Elon Musk's xAI, she confirmed on Wednesday.
Asato claims the company's AI chatbot Grok was used to create fake images of her in a bikini and an AI-generated video showing her being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault. She said the images made her feel “dehumanised” and “demeaned”.
“MP Jess Asato sues Elon Musk's xAI over fake bikini images created by its Grok AI tool.”
The MP is seeking damages and wants to set a legal precedent holding tech companies liable for the design of AI systems. Her lawyer, Ravi Naik of law firm AWO, said the claim argues xAI violated data protection law and breached Asato's private information.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer backed Asato, saying: “I’m really pleased that we took Grok on a few months ago … But Jess is right, she's a parliamentarian, and I'm 100% behind the action that she has taken.”
Asato was first targeted in January after speaking about how Grok was being used to create false sexualised images. Researchers said the tool generated around 3 million sexualised images in less than two weeks, describing it as “an industrial-scale machine for the production of sexual abuse material”.
Musk's company later put the technology behind a paywall and limited the chatbot's capacity to generate sexualised images.
Naik said he is now acting for “multiple individuals” who have come forward wanting to take similar legal action against xAI. Many had struggled to get X to remove the images until they received legal support, he added.
Asato said: “There were guardrails that the engineers and Elon Musk could have put in place to stop Grok from being able to create sexualised images but they decided not to put those guardrails in place.”
She has called on others who have had their image manipulated by Grok in an “abusive or demeaning way” to come forward.
It has since become illegal in the UK to create or request a non-consensual deepfake image of an adult.