A UK MP is mounting what could be a landmark legal challenge against Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, arguing that existing privacy and data protection laws should apply to AI-generated images created without a person’s consent.

Jess Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, has launched High Court proceedings against xAI after users of Grok, the company’s chatbot and image-generation tool, created fake sexualized images and videos of her.

The case is being closely watched because it seeks to test whether data protection and privacy law can be used to hold AI developers responsible for the misuse of people’s images.

“We need to reset our idea of what tech is able to do without our consent as citizens,” Asato told BBC Radio 4’s Today program.

The images were created after Asato became one of many public figures to criticize Grok’s ability to generate sexualized images of women and children in January.

She says users retaliated by taking photographs from her social media accounts and using the AI tool to alter them.

“As a result, I had retaliation from people using Grok to put me in a bikini,” she said.

“They took my picture from social media and stripped me into a bikini and unfortunately produced a horrible video which had me being chloroformed and prepared for a sexual assault.”

Jess Asato, MP suing xAI

Digital stripping

Asato adds that she has seen worse images involving Grok, including a woman known to be Jewish.

“They put her in a bikini but put her in Auschwitz. So a double racialized misogynistic treatment.”

Asato described the practice as “digital stripping,” arguing that while such content may not fall within current laws governing intimate images, it is still a serious violation of consent and personal privacy.

The case highlights what campaigners describe as a legal grey area. While the UK has outlawed non-consensual sexually explicit deepfakes, many AI-generated images remain outside existing criminal offenses.

Asato argues that xAI may still have breached laws governing data protection and misuse of private information by failing to prevent users from exploiting images of real people.

Bikini images may infringe UK data protection & privacy laws

“My case seeks to prove that they haven’t obeyed the law, particularly in relation to data protection and privacy,” she told Radio 4.

“This is an issue of consent over my image and whether they had the appropriate safeguards in place to stop that image from being misused.

The MP’s lawyer, Ravi Naik, told the FT that the case centers on whether AI developers can be held accountable for the foreseeable consequences of their products.

This particular dispute was amplified by the fact that Musk – who is set to become the world’s first trillionaire if SpaceX's planned IPO moves forward at its proposed valuation – retweeted a post mocking the MP’s objections to the AI-generated bikini images.

“It is almost as if he was glorifying the fact that this is what his tool could do,” Asato said.

"My case seeks to prove that they haven’t obeyed the law, particularly in relation to data protection and privacy."

Jess Asato, MP suing xAI

The MP argued that it was important that individuals are able to protect themselves against AI companies that are simply not putting the right safeguards in place.

“They could have been put in place at the time that Grok was created, but Musk decided not to. He wanted this to be ‘spicy,’” she added.

On Thursday UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer backed the MP saying she was "absolutely right" to take legal action against Elon Musk's xAI over "disgusting" images created of her.

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