Labour MP Jess Asato has filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI company after its Grok tool was used to create fake sexualised images of her. The legal action, submitted to the High Court in London, alleges breaches of data protection law and misuse of private information.
Asato, who represents Lowestoft, said in January that seeing herself depicted in a bikini without consent felt “violating”. The images were generated after she publicly criticised the creation of non-consensual sexualised pictures using AI.
What the lawsuit says Grok produced
Grok didn’t stop at still images. It also generated a video “showing her being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault,” the MP told a newspaper. Her case follows a similar lawsuit filed in New York by Ashley St Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children. St Clair alleged explicit images of her were generated by Grok, including one where she appeared underage.
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The MP’s attempt to sue xAI could become a test case for how much responsibility AI tool creators bear for what users produce with their systems. “My hope is that this will rebalance individuals’ rights against very large tech companies that should have put safeguards in place before they harmed women and children,” she said.
Legal argument centers on developer accountability
Ravi Naik, Asato’s lawyer, told the paper: “At its heart this case is about a single principle: that developers must answer for the way they design and deploy their tools.” He added: “Our case is that … an image that is of you, is designed to look like you and [whose] very purpose is to degrade you or have you represented in different conditions, must be an image of you. xAI say otherwise.”
The UK government threatened action against X in January after Grok was used to produce large volumes of sexualised imagery based on real women — and in some cases, children. The media regulator launched an inquiry. Musk’s company initially said it would restrict the feature to paying customers on X. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called that response “horrific”. Days later, X said it had entirely stopped Grok from editing pictures of real people to show them in revealing clothes.
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Grok was among AI platforms that falsely accused two Hampshire police officers of involvement in an arrest. Christi Hill, a former police constable of 12 years, said she had been forced to flee to a safe location. Numerous posts on X have called for Hill and a male officer, also wrongly identified, to be tracked down and arrested — or in some instances to face violence.
Downing Street, government departments and many MPs have stayed on X despite calls to leave the app over the Grok images and also over Musk’s support for far-right causes in the UK and his predictions of political violence.
Asato’s case now moves through the High Court. The outcome could set a precedent for how British law treats AI-generated content that mimics real people without their permission. xAI has not publicly responded to the specific claims in the lawsuit.
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