UK MP sues Musk’s xAI over fake sexualised images of her

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — A British lawmaker has filed a case at London's High Court against Elon Musk's xAI after its Grok chatbot tool was used to create fake sexualised images of her, including in a bikini.Jess Asato, of the ruling Labour Party, said she lodged the High Court claim against xAI, the company behind Grok on Wednesday.Grok sparked a global outcry earlier this year for allowing users to create and share sexualised pictures of women.Researchers said it had generated an estimated three million sexualised images in a matter of days.Asato said she was just one of the thousands of women and even children who have been the victim of abusive and sexualised AI deepfakes.This should never have happened -- and xAI must be held accountable, she posted Wednesday on X, the social media platform also owned by Musk's SpaceX.An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing global efforts to regulate the technology amid a proliferation of AI tools, including nudification apps, according to experts.Asato said on X on Thursday that Grok users had made images of her in a bikini and also created an AI generated video of her being sexually assaulted.The abuse in January came after she spoke out after the rollout of the editing feature on Grok, developed by the tech billionaire's startup xAI and integrated into X.The function allowed users to alter online images of real people with simple text prompts such as put her in a bikini or remove her clothes.X reacted to the controversy by saying it would make changes to stop the creation of sexualised deepfakes of children and women.But the scandal spurred governments and regulators around the world.The European Union opened a probe into Grok in January and EU lawmakers and countries agreed to ban artificial intelligence systems generating sexualised deepfakes on Thursday.X's algorithms are also under investigation in France, while UK media and data regulators are also investigating its technology.Speaking in parliament in January, Asato said AI was being used to humiliate and sexualise women.I have also had my own treatment and been stripped into a bikini by AI on X. Much less than many victims have suffered but a reminder of what many thousands of women face daily, she said.AWO, a law firm that is representing Asato, said her claim against xAI was for breaches of data protection law and misuse of her private information, seeking accountability from xAI.Her lawyer, Ravi Naik, said AI should not be exempt from legal consequences when it inflicted a wrong and the law should provide a remedy.This content existed because of design choices made by engineers at xAI. It is built deliberately, he said.Grok was designed in a way that permitted the creation of non-consensual, sexualised and misogynistic images of women -– and that outcome was a choice, not a glitch.He said the case would be one of the first claims to test liability for the design of an AI system.We hope it will make it clear to AI developers that safety cannot be an afterthought, he said.AFP has contacted xAI for comment.