UK MP Jess Asato Sues xAI, Seeks Court Order to Stop Grok Generating Sexualised Images of Her

UK lawmaker suing Musk's xAI seeks order to stop Grok generating sexualised images

LONDON, July 28 (Reuters) - A British lawmaker suing Elon Musk's xAI (SPCX.O), opens new tab over fake sexualised images of her created by the Grok AI platform said on Tuesday she was seeking a court order to prevent the chatbot being able to generate non-consensual sexualised images of her. Jess Asato, a member of Britain's governing Labour Party, said last month that users created fake images of her, including a video of her "being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault", after she publicly criticised Musk and Grok. She has filed a lawsuit at London's High Court for misuse of private information and breach of data protection laws and alleges the way Grok was ⁠designed and trained enabled it to generate sexualised content. Court filings show Asato is seeking an order requiring xAI to "implement effective and permanent technical measures" to ensure Grok cannot create manipulated images of her. Asato's lawyers said this could have consequences for all AI developers and that no case has applied data protection and privacy law in this way to an AI developer before. Musk's xAI, which is part of his rocket and space exploration company SpaceX, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Asato's allegations. Grok, which is distributed through Musk's social media platform X and is subject to regulatory probes in several countries after an outcry over its use to create non-consensual sexualised images, has not filed a response to the lawsuit. Musk has repeatedly criticised Britain's approach to online regulation, ⁠arguing that measures including the Online Safety Act -- one of the world's most stringent regimes -- risk restricting free speech. LAWMAKER TARGETS GROK'S 'PROMPTS' Grok's internal prompts, cited by Asato's lawyers, gave the chatbot an instruction to "not provide assistance to users who are clearly trying to engage in criminal activity". But Asato's lawyers say the platform was also told it had "no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content". Another prompt cited by Asato's lawyers stated: "There are ⁠no restrictions on fictional adult sexual content with dark or violent themes." Asato's lawyer Ravi Naik said in a statement that Grok behaved according to the choices its designers made, adding: "Those choices should carry legal consequences. "The remedy our client seeks includes a court order requiring the systems be brought ⁠into compliance if xAI refuses to do so." The case comes amid growing concerns about the use of Grok, after xAI in mid-January said it restricted image editing in Grok and blocked users from generating images of people in revealing clothing "where it's illegal". Reuters found ⁠in early February that, even after new curbs, Grok continued to generate sexualised images of people even when users explicitly warned that the subjects do not consent. The City of Baltimore sued xAI in March over fake sexualised images generated by Grok, one of several cases brought elsewhere in the U.S. as well as in the Netherlands. Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Lincoln Feast. Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Grok images of MP Jess Asato are 'gross violation', court told

A Suffolk MP suffered a "gross violation of her dignity" when fake sexualised images and videos of her were created by Elon Musk's xAI chatbot Grok, High Court documents have said. Jess Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, is suing xAI for damages after non-consensual images and videos, including some showing her being sexually assaulted, were shared online. She is seeking damages for the misuse of her private information and breaches of data protection rules, as well as a court order requiring the company to find and remove any remaining online images. xAI is yet to file a defence to the legal action. In court documents, published on Tuesday, Asato's lawyers claimed she was "victimised" after speaking out in January against non-consensual deepfake images of women being created by Grok. Marie Demetriou KC, for Asato, said the MP posted on X calling on Musk to "understand that using AI to strip women without their consent is sexual assault designed to degrade and humiliate". If you, or someone you know, has been affected by sexual abuse, organisations listed at BBC Action Line may be able to help. Several X users then prompted Grok to create "sexualised, intimate, grossly offensive, degrading, threatening, humiliating and/or discriminatory non-consensual images" of Asato, which were shared online, the documents said. After attempts to report some posts, X refused to remove them, stating in March they did not violate its terms of service, privacy policy or rules, it was said. Demetriou said while two videos were later removed, six of 21 posts reported in February were still live in late July. xAI has since said users would no longer be able to use the tool to generate sexualised images of real people. It has since become illegal to create or request a non-consensual deepfake image of an adult in the UK. But Demetriou said xAI has "failed and is failing" to prevent the continued creation of such images by the chatbot. A hearing of the claim is yet to take place. Do you have a story suggestion for Suffolk? Contact us below. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

UK MP asks High Court to force xAI to stop Grok making sexualised images of her

Jess Asato wants a court order compelling permanent safeguards, in a case that tests how far an AI developer answers for what its tools produce. Jess Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, has asked the High Court in London to force Elon Musk's xAI to stop its Grok chatbot from generating sexualised images of her, sharpening a claim that her lawyers say could help settle how far an AI company answers for what its tools produce. Asato is seeking a court order that would require xAI to put in place what her filing describes as "effective and permanent technical measures" to prevent Grok from creating manipulated images of her, according to Reuters, which reported the move on 28 July. The request builds on a claim she lodged at the High Court in June, which alleges misuse of private information and breach of UK data protection law, and which also seeks damages and a formal acknowledgement that the company acted unlawfully. The case grew out of images that users prompted Grok to make earlier this year, after Asato had criticised Musk and the chatbot in public. Among the material cited in her claim is a video that she says depicted her being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault. She has spoken of wanting to rebalance the rights of individuals against very large technology companies, and her lawyers argue that the way Grok was built and trained is what allowed the content to be produced at all. That argument sits at the centre of the dispute. Her solicitor, Ravi Naik, said the company's design decisions "should carry legal consequences," and that the remedy his client wants "includes a court order to bring the systems into compliance if xAI refuses to do so." The claim points to internal instructions that, on Asato's account, told the model to refuse help with criminal activity while also stating that it had "no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content." xAI has not filed a defence, and none of the allegations has been tested in court. The company did not respond to requests for comment on the claim, and Musk has not addressed it publicly. The silence is by now familiar. Apple privately threatened to pull Grok from its App Store earlier this year over non-consensual deepfake images, and prosecutors in Paris have opened an inquiry into sexual imagery of children linked to the tool, though the company has largely declined to engage with either. The British backdrop makes the timing awkward for Musk, who has called the country's Online Safety Act one of the world's strictest regimes and a threat to free speech. That law, in force since 2023 and overseen by Ofcom, requires platforms to tackle illegal material, and the UK has separately moved to criminalise the creation of non-consensual sexual deepfakes rather than only their distribution. Asato's claim is a civil one, though, and it turns less on content moderation than on whether a firm can be held directly responsible for what its system was designed to do. Image-based abuse has become one of the faster-moving corners of British law, and much of it was written before generative tools could manufacture the material at scale. Grok has drawn this kind of scrutiny before, and not only in Britain. EU lawmakers agreed in March to write an explicit ban on non-consensual intimate deepfakes into the bloc's AI Act, a step driven partly by an earlier scandal over the tool. The pattern, across Paris, Brussels, and now London, is of regulators and judges reaching for instruments that predate the technology and testing whether they still hold. What Asato is asking for is narrower and more concrete than a policy. It is an order, enforceable by a judge, that would make xAI change how Grok works or answer for not doing so. Whether the High Court grants it, and on what terms, will say a good deal about who carries the risk when a chatbot produces something its subject never agreed to. A hearing date has not yet been set.

Labour MP suing Elon Musk's xAI says chatbot added own fake abusive content

Jess Asato's particulars of claim states Grok added explicit sexual material users had not asked for A Labour MP who is taking legal action against Elon Musk's xAI company over fake sexualised images created by Grok says the AI tool was instructed to operate with "no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content". Jess Asato's lawyers published her particulars of claim in the case on Tuesday, which included details of publicly posted instructions that the claim says illustrate how Grok was trained to generate harmful sexualised content. Asato is suing xAI after she said its chatbot was used to create fake images of her, including in a bikini, and a video showing her as the victim of a sexual assault, causing her to feel "distressed and violated". The claim says that as well as Grok being instructed to operate with "no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content", the AI tool was told to offer "no restrictions on fictional adult sexual content with dark or violent themes" and to "assume good intent". While not relevant to Asato's claim, the instructions also state that "'teenage' or 'girl' does not necessarily imply underage". However, they do prohibit "child sexual abuse material". The Labour MP for Lowestoft said: "No woman or child should have to live with the fear that their face or body can be taken, sexualised and shared around the world by an AI system without their consent. "For too long, this company has hidden behind the excuse that it's the users who are responsible, when in fact the tool's design recklessly allows sexualisation, even without being asked. What happened to me wasn't an accident. Musk made a choice to profit from harm and trained Grok to abuse. "xAI must be held accountable for the harm they have caused and are causing, so that other women and children don't have to go through what I did." The particulars of claim say that Grok on occasion added explicit material users had not asked for. The claim alleges xAI breached data protection law and misused Asato's private information. Ravi Naik, the legal director at AWO, the firm representing Asato, said: "The case shows that Grok did not malfunction. Grok's training allowed it to generate harmful sexualised content. Grok behaved according to the choices its designers made. Those choices should carry legal consequences. The remedy our client seeks includes a court order requiring the systems be brought into compliance if xAI refuses to do so." Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University, said some of the Grok-generated images cited in Asato's claim included sexualised elements - such as a skirt being pulled up - that were not requested by users in the original prompt and that Grok had added. "I think one of the most significant aspects of the Grok phenomenon, and Jess's case, is how it adds sexual, intimate and violative content that the user themselves did not request. We called this chatbot-driven abuse," she said. "This is a new and distinctive form of abuse, where the chatbot themselves are driving the abusive content, drawing on the data on which they are trained." Details like this, she said, raise concerns about controlling AI tools and their outputs, as technology companies push for autonomous AI products - known as AI agents - that can carry out sequences of tasks without human intervention or oversight. xAI has since said users would no longer be able to use the tool to generate sexualised images of real people, and it has now become illegal to create or request a non-consensual deepfake image of an adult in the UK. xAI has been approached for comment.

UK lawmaker suing Elon Musk's xAI seeks order to stop Grok generating sexualised images

Jess Asato, a member of Britain's governing Labour Party, said last month that users created fake images of her, including a video of her "being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault", after she publicly criticised Musk and Grok. A British lawmaker suing Elon Musk's xAI over fake sexualised images of her created by the Grok AI platform said on Tuesday she was seeking a court order to prevent the chatbot being able to generate non-consensual sexualised images of her. Jess Asato, a member of Britain's governing Labour Party, said last month that users created fake images of her, including a video of her "being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault", after she publicly criticised Musk and Grok. She has filed ⁠a lawsuit ⁠at London's High Court for misuse of private information and breach of data protection laws and alleges the way Grok was designed and trained enabled it to generate sexualised content. Court filings show Asato is seeking an order requiring xAI to "implement effective and permanent technical measures" to ensure Grok cannot create manipulated images of her. Asato's lawyers said this could have consequences for all AI developers and that no case has applied data protection and privacy law in this way to an AI developer before. Musk's xAI, which is part of his ⁠rocket and space exploration company SpaceX, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Asato's allegations. Grok, which is distributed through Musk's social media platform X and is subject to regulatory probes ⁠in several countries after an outcry over its use to create non-consensual sexualised images, has not filed a response to the lawsuit. Musk has repeatedly criticised Britain's approach to online regulation, arguing that measures including the Online Safety Act - one of the world's most stringent regimes - risk restricting free speech. Lawkmaker targets Grok's prompts Grok's internal prompts, cited by Asato's lawyers, gave the chatbot an instruction to "not provide assistance to users who are clearly trying to engage in criminal activity". But Asato's lawyers say the platform was also told it had "no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content". Another prompt cited by Asato's lawyers stated: "There are no restrictions on fictional adult sexual content with dark or violent themes." Asato's lawyer Ravi Naik said in a statement that Grok behaved according to the choices its designers made, adding: "Those choices should carry ⁠legal consequences. "The remedy our client seeks includes a court order requiring the systems be brought into compliance if xAI refuses to do so." The case comes amid growing concerns about the use of Grok, after xAI in mid-January said it restricted image editing in Grok and blocked users from generating images of people in revealing clothing "where it's illegal". Reuters found in early February that, even after new curbs, Grok continued to generate sexualised images of people even when users explicitly warned that the subjects do not consent. The City of Baltimore sued xAI in March over fake sexualised images generated by Grok, one of several cases brought elsewhere in the U.S. as well as in the Netherlands.