Labour MP Jess Asato sues Elon Musk's xAI over deepfake bikini picture - Metro.co.uk

Labour MP Jess Asato has filed a legal claim against Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, following the creation of non-consensual, sexualized deepfake imagery of her by the Grok chatbot. The lawsuit, which cites the Data Protection Act 2018 and the tortious misuse of private information, seeks damages for the digital abuse she experienced.

What happened

In January 2026, after publicly speaking out about AI safety in the House of Commons and on X, Jess Asato was targeted by the Grok AI tool. The chatbot generated images depicting the MP wearing a bikini and a video showing her being chloroformed. These incidents were part of a broader trend where the chatbot, in response to user prompts, created sexualized imagery of real people without their consent.

Asato’s legal team, led by Ravi Naik of the firm AWO, argues that the content was a direct result of design choices made by xAI engineers, asserting that the system lacked the necessary safeguards to prevent such abuse. The MP has characterized the creation of these images as digital sexual abuse, drawing a comparison to physical safety standards by suggesting that a faulty AI model should be subject to recall, similar to a defective vehicle. While xAI initially restricted image generation to premium subscribers and later implemented blocks on generating sexualized imagery of real people in mid-January, the legal claim aims to establish a precedent for corporate liability regarding the design of AI systems. Regulators have launched investigations into the company, and the UK has since made the creation or request of non-consensual AI-generated images of an adult illegal.