UK Politician Jess Asato Got Deepfaked. Now She’s Taking xAI to Court

Rosie SwashThe Big StoryOct 27, 2026 9:29 AMUK Politician Jess Asato Got Deepfaked. Now She’s Taking xAI to CourtJess Asato’s public campaigning for victims of online abuse put her in the crosshairs of Grok’s deepfake scandal. Then the UK member of parliament became a victim of the abuse herself.Photo-Illustration: WIRED STAFF; House of Commons/Laurie NobleSave StorySave this storySave StorySave this storyFew people understand the current deepfake epidemic better than Jess Asato. The British Labour MP has spent years campaigning against the use of technology to abuse women and girls. Then, after calling out Elon Musk during the notorious Grok Deepfake Scandal of 2025, Asato found herself caught in the very crisis she had been trying to prevent.Disturbing and degrading deepfake images of the MP circulated widely. One appeared to depict a sexual assault. When Asato reported them to X, the platform repeatedly dismissed her complaints. So she decided to take the fight somewhere else: the courts. She is now pursuing legal action against Musk’s xAI, arguing that it unlawfully used her image without her consent. The case could help establish a precedent for holding AI companies accountable when their products cause harm.For Asato, this is personal, but it is hardly new territory. Before entering Parliament, she spent years working with charities supporting survivors of domestic abuse and vulnerable children. That experience has shaped her political career, informing her push for stronger protections for women and children online. Now, she is confronting more troubling questions: What happens when the technology enabling abuse becomes ubiquitous, the platforms hosting it refuse to intervene, and the people targeted are left to fight back on their own?At stake for Asato is more than the misuse of a single image. It is whether consent still means anything when AI can manufacture almost anything, and whether the companies building these tools can be made to answer for what they do. Asato is betting that the law can catch up with the technology. And she is prepared to take on Musk to find out. (xAI did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.)Also, before you read on, be aware that this interview includes references to sexual assault and child sex abuse.This interview has been edited for length and clarity.ROSIE SWASH: Jess, I just want to have a couple of warm-up questions before we get into it. Tell us a bit about your background, how did you end up becoming MP for Lowestoft?JESS ASATO: Sure. So, I grew up in East Anglia in Norfolk and Suffolk, and in a not very political family. I got the politics bug in 1997 when Tony Blair was talking about education, education, education. Having experienced it, I felt that we could be doing a lot better in our education system. So I joined the Labour Party and got involved with my local groups.Before Parliament, I worked for the largest children's charity in the UK for three years on their policy and public affairs, trying to change legislation on behalf of the most vulnerable children in the country. Six years prior to that I worked for a domestic abuse charity called SafeLives where we did huge amounts of work to try and improve the situation for survivors of domestic abuse, particularly through the Domestic Abuse Act.Those twin issues of women and children have become my focus in Parliament, and I’ve been very clear that my reason for being here, my mission really, is to be a voice for women and children.Well, that’s a good entry point for us to start talking about this year. So in early 2026, there was widespread reporting on Grok, xAI’s chatbot, being used to create sexualized images of children and women, and those images being circulated on X. How aware were you at this point of the phenomenon of deepfakes being used in this way?Very aware, and actually had been working with survivors who had experienced deepfakes for quite a number of years. Ever since the advent of AI this has been happening to women, and there’s also been developing risks of children both being put into child sexual abuse material and also children using nudification tools on other children, thereby criminalizing themselves because these tools are so easy to access and often free.So I was already very alive to the huge harms being created by AI deepfakes of both women and children before Grok ever happened. It was a known harm, which is why many of the tools from other companies had already taken steps to stop them from being used to create this kind of content.There are a number of tools where, if you type in “nudify,” or “take the clothes off this person,” the tool will refuse to do that. So into that environment came Grok.Was there a particularly egregious example or incident prior to Grok when you became aware of deepfakes that really stuck with you?There is a brilliant campaigner who goes by the name of Jodie. I think it was probably listening to the experiences of Jodie, who was deepfaked, and it was such an affront to her that somebody would do this, and then she found out it was actually a friend. Such a betrayal of trust.These things destroy not just the individual involved, but often families and everyone around them too.For people who don’t know, who exactly was Jodie? Is this a constituent of yours or someone who came forward to you specifically?No, no, no. She's a very well-known campaigner on this issue. That’s not her real name.I know it sounds obvious, but what exactly is nudification?It is where you ask an AI tool to take the image or video of a real person and use generative AI to make that person either nude, partially nude, or engaging in pornographic acts. This is something that, because of the photorealistic nature of AI images, it has become increasingly hard to see what is a fake image.It can often look incredibly, incredibly real.So what was it particularly about the Grok scandal earlier this year that made you want to raise this in the House o