Millions of women and girls across the world have had their images manipulated and sexualized by artificial intelligence without their consent — with little recourse for those generating the images. And, as one British lawmaker recently learned, no one is safe from falling victim to this kind of harmful content.
Now, she’s fighting back — and wants to help others fight, too.
Jess Asato, a member of Britain’s governing Labour Party, is suing Elon Musk’s company xAI after she says someone used its Grok chatbot to create fake images of her wearing a bikini. But she knows she’s not alone and is spreading the word on how others can make a difference.
‘Nobody would be able to walk up to me in the street and strip me’
Asato filed a claim with London’s High Court on Wednesday, alleging Grok misused her private information under the U.K.’s Data Protection Act. Not only is she seeking damages — she’s hoping to set a precedent of holding companies liable for how their AI is designed and used.
“Nobody would be able to walk up to me in the street and strip me and put me in a bikini, and I don’t see why anybody should be able to do that to me online, because the feeling, while it is not quite the same, is very similar,” Asato said. “It is like somebody has digitally stripped me without my consent.”
But, she says, the issue is so much bigger than her.
In a post on social media Thursday, Asato details other ways Grok has been used to demean and harass women.
In a video accompanying the post, Asato said images and videos of her started going around after she spoke out about Grok being used to create that very material.
“In the worst case, there was a video made of me that was AI-generated. It had a group of men surround me, chloroform me so that I fainted, and, right at the end, they lifted up my skirt as if to rape me.”
-Jess Asato
“What happened to me was unacceptable — but it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she wrote.
She’s not wrong, and she’s far from the only female lawmaker who’s spoken out against people using AI in this manner.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has also been the target of this kind of content in recent months. She says she knows she’s in a good position to fight back — but also recognizes that’s a privilege many victims don’t have.
“Deepfakes are a dangerous tool, because they can deceive, manipulate, and strike anyone,” Meloni wrote in a post on X. “I can defend myself. Many others cannot.”
U.S. Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who has long been the target of misogynistic internet trolls, says it happened to her, too.
“There’s a shock to seeing images of yourself that someone could think are real,” she told Rolling Stone in April.
Talk is great, action is better
While the female lawmakers who have been victims of this kind of exploitation say talking about the issue is a crucial step in stopping it, they also know it’s not enough.
In Asato’s case, she’s circulating a global petition called “Stop AI Abuse” aimed at holding big tech companies accountable for the harm their products cause and pushing for tougher regulation.
Here in the U.S., President Donald Trump signed the Tools to Address Known Exploitation by Immobilizing Technological Deepfakes On Websites and Networks — or TAKE IT DOWN — Act into law last month. The law criminalizes sharing intimate images, videos or deepfakes without consent.
Now, Ocasio-Cortez and a bipartisan group of fellow lawmakers want to take it a step further.
They’ve reintroduced the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (DEFIANCE) Act in the House of Representatives. The DEFIANCE Act passed in the Senate in January, but was put on the back burner in the House as other priorities took precedence.
The proposed legislation would give victims of deepfake sexual content a legal avenue to take action against those who create or share the content.
“Although the imagery may be fake, the harm to the victims is very real,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., one of the bill’s cosponsors, said when the legislation was reintroduced to the House. “Victims have lost their jobs, their reputations, and many have suffered from life-altering depression or anxiety. By introducing the DEFIANCE Act, we’re giving power back to the victims; cracking down on the production, receipt, distribution, and possession of ‘deepfake’ images; and holding those responsible for the images accountable.”
The European Union has also launched an investigation into Grok and its “spicy mode” after the chatbot generated AI photos of minors “in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt.”
The goal is to determine whether Grok “properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU.”
India, Malaysia and France have also threatened to punish Grok over the digital undressing of minors.
Grok has made changes, but many say they’re not enough
Amid public outrage over its technology being used to sexualize minors, xAI did make some platform-wide changes. Those didn’t go over much better.
In January, Grok announced it would limit its image-editing tools only to paying subscribers.
A Downing Street spokesperson called that response “insulting to victims of misogyny and sexual abuse.”
Experts criticized the move, saying it does not address the core concerns, just makes money off them.
“Putting ‘nudity’ behind a paywall doesn’t make it safer — it just makes it monetizable,” social media specialist Karen Middleton told the Daily Herald in January.
Musk has said that anyone using Grok to create “illegal content will suffer the same consequences” as if it were real and they uploaded it. xAI also says it has safeguards against “depicting minors in minimal clothing” and that “improvements are ongoing to block such requests entirely.”
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