Jess Asato is taking legal action against xAI after saying Grok created fake sexualised images of her and a video showing her as the victim of a sexual assault. Her lawyers published the particulars of claim on Tuesday, putting the allegations and the remedy they seek into the public record.
Jess Asato claim
Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, said the images included one of her in a bikini and that the material left her distressed and violated. She said the case is about how a tool can generate sexualised material about a real person without consent, not just about one disputed image.
In her statement, she 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." She also said: "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."
Ravi Naik and Grok
Ravi Naik, Asato’s lawyer at AWO, said the case shows Grok did not malfunction. He said Grok’s training allowed it to generate harmful sexualised content and that the remedy sought includes a court order requiring the systems to be brought into compliance if xAI refuses to do so.
The particulars of claim say Grok was instructed to operate with no restrictions on adult sexual content or offensive content, with no restrictions on fictional adult sexual content with dark or violent themes. They also say the system was told to assume good intent and that teenage or girl does not necessarily imply underage, while still prohibiting child sexual abuse material.
xAI response after Tuesday
The claim says Grok on occasion added explicit material users had not asked for. Clare McGlynn, a professor of law at Durham University, said some of the images cited in Asato’s claim included sexualised elements that were not requested in the original prompt and were added by Grok.
McGlynn said: "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 added: "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."
After the claim was published, xAI said users would no longer be able to use the tool to generate sexualised images of real people. The filing leaves the dispute focused on whether the court treats Grok’s output as a product-design problem that can require changes to the systems themselves.
