This interview includes references to sexual assault and child sex abuse.
WIRED’s Rosie Swash speaks with UK politician Jess Asato about tackling Elon Musk’s xAI after being subject to deepfaking via Grok, xAI’s chatbot. Jess and Rosie also delve into the ‘AI kill switch’ proposal, the specifics of Jess’ court case and the harsh reality of being deepfaked on the internet in 2026.
I wanted to take you back to the beginning of this year,
There was widespread reporting of Grok,
xAI's chatbot, being used to create sexualized images
and those images being circulated on X.
How aware were you at this point of the phenomenon
of deepfakes being used in this way?
And actually had been working, you know,
with survivors who had experienced deepfakes
for quite a number of years, you know,
ever since the advent of AI, you know,
And the developing risks of children both
being, you know, put into child sexual abuse material,
but also children using nudification tools
on other children, thereby criminalizing themselves
because these tools are so easy to access, often free.
So I was already very alive to the huge harms
being created by AI deepfakes of both women and children
It was a known harm, which is why many of the tools
from, you know, other companies had already taken,
you know, steps to stop them from being used
And, you know, there are a number of tools
nudify or take the clothes off this person,
So into that environment came Grok.
Was there a particularly egregious example
and incident prior to Grok when you became aware
of deepfakes that really stuck with you?
Yeah, I think it was probably listening
to the experiences of Jodie, who was deepfaked,
And then she found out it was actually a friend.
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?
or someone who came forward to you specifically?
She's a very well-known campaigner on this issue.
Before, what happened was that victims had to prove
and now it's up to the perpetrators to prove
that there was no consent to create these images.
Well, it is where you ask an AI tool to take the image
and, you know, using generative AI to make that person
either nude or engaging in pornographic acts
because of the huge development of AI
and the, you know, real photorealistic nature of it,
it has become increasingly hard to see this as,
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 of Commons?
It was the fact that we already knew
that you could stop this from happening
by designing the AI tool to reject the ability to do this,
that it actually says that the tool should
accept asks for the creation of adult sexual content,
even that which has dark or violent themes.
And the fact was that this was completely avoidable,
but also because I just spent a year and a half
campaigning to get a ban on nudification apps,
and here was an all-purpose AI tool
And it just felt to me as though, you know,
and his product decided to turn the clock back.
So what exactly did you stand up and say?
What I did was I talked about the need
for the government to accelerate their ban
on nudification apps, which they did.
So the Secretary of State, Liz Kendall, said
that she was going to bring that ban into law
through the Crime and Policing Bill, which she did.
But I also said that it was very important
is not a sole-purpose nudification tool.
and therefore we needed to bring all AI chatbots
under the auspices of the Online Safety Act.
that legislation comes into effect.
There's got to be a consultation, I understand,
So technically another Grok could happen in this period,
but in the future, there would be much stronger measures
that we could take against tools like Grok
So that's a really positive outcome
of your interjection in Parliament,
but what else happened as a result of you standing up?
Well, one of the things that happened was
that I posted on social saying that, you know,
and stop Grok from being able to do this.
And then, of course, I became a victim of,
So, @Grok, put this woman in a bikini.
And, you know, most of the images, you know,
were sort of pornified, I would say.
but they were me with, you know, inflated boobs in a bikini.
Then people tried to, you know, make it funny, I guess,
by putting, you know, swastika on me
or hammer and sickles, depending friend,
or making me pregnant with quintuplets
because, of course, that's the only use for women,
But the kind of really disturbing one was a video of me
being surrounded by a group of men,
and then I fall backwards onto a chair,
but clearly the next frame is meant to be a sexual assault.
That was the point at which friend said,
You probably need to reach out to a lawyer,
because each of these things we reported to X,
and, you know, none of them contravened
We just keep getting those sort of repeat emails
We've looked into this and there's nothing to see here.
So I did engage a lawyer who sent a letter to X
to ask for these to be removed, and they were,
but it was at that point that he said,
Actually, I think you might actually have a case.
We think that xAI have broken the law.
I mean, I think it's brilliant that you did that,
and I can see the through line of your legal training
and how practically you tackle things.
But when you were just telling me that,
I had a very physical reaction to you describing
what they did, and I just wanted to sort of find out more
I mean, I'm really impressed by how you handled it
but it must have been really awful.
to degrade, and to push women out of online spaces.
bad or difficult things that happen as a way
of thinking about how do we change this for the future.
My old boss was an amazing woman called Tessa Jowell,
and she used to say to me, if anything went wrong,
she would say, How do we change this negative energy
How do we work our way out this into a place
where we actually feel that we've learned from it?
And so I guess, you know, she instilled in me
that sort of sense that when something bad happens,
You can wallow in it, you can try and forget about it,
or you can use it as a catalyst for change.
And so I was quite trepidatious about the idea
not least because of the person who is at the top of xAI,
But also because I didn't want myself
Many, many women, you know, had things that were created
but also other nudification tools that are much, much worse.
Having said that, I knew that if there was the opportunity
to say that actually they'd broken the law,
there was an important point of principle
on behalf of all of the women and the children
whose images were manipulated and misused by Grok,
who would never, ever be able to bring a legal case.
And so I decided that, you know, I wanted to do this
because I wanted to be able to show
that no one is bigger than the law.
in terms of your social media presence
If you break the law in our country,
you need to feel the force of that.
And as an ex-lawyer and now as a legislator,
we uphold our law where it has been broken.
And so it's also about giving control back, I think,
to us as individuals, but also as a society.
So many of these digital changes have been done
without our consent, our say, you know,
that there's a sort of runaway train that we're all on,
because we all need to use online spaces
And so my view is that we should be expecting companies
to respect our law or at least make new laws
You said there that you gave it some thought.
In that moment of trying to decide how to respond,
Are you going back and talking to your team
or your family to work out how you should respond,
knowing that it may invite further speculation
It's one thing, you know, being a politician
and arguing your case to change the law
it's another having your own legal case.
And so I was worried about the impact
that that might have on my family and my children.
I'll be honest, because I have been, you know,
at the heart of pile-ons on X before.
I also know that this can bring danger to politicians.
And so I worried about the fact that, you know,
I am obviously engaging and making the defendant
somebody who has got this very wide reach on social media.
that it's important to fight on the field that you've got.
And this was an opportunity I felt to make a difference.
So I weighed that up and thought that it was worth,
you know, having that kind of attention spotlight
because there is a bigger issue here
When you say you don't like bullies,
are you talking about the, let's face it, men
who used Grok in this way in the first place,
or are you talking about Elon Musk?
I'm talking about, yeah, the men who used this
as a form of trying to push women out of the online space.
And actually it was quite clear in quite a lot
of the comments that, you know, they were saying,
Well, if you don't like this, then get off the platform.
If this is too hot for you, get out of the kitchen,
Do you want me in the kitchen or out of it?
And I think it's really interesting
when you look at X in terms of its demographics in the UK.
So women are already, you know, voting with their feet
in relation to this particular platform.
And I think some of that's down to the fact
that there is just so much misogyny and abuse on it.
So I'm assuming, correct me if I'm wrong,
that the other side of the response to going public
and deciding to continue with being public on this issue
is that other women have come forward to you.
Did you have other women coming forward
talking to you about your decision to make this legal?
And actually that has been one of the,
has both been people coming forward and saying,
Thank you, because this has now given me the license
to actually accept that what happened to me,
And so, in a way, what I'm hoping is
that this has helped some victims to process
and understand that this was not right.
I've also had emails from parents where they've said
that this has happened to their daughter.
boys have made pornographic AI imagery of them.
And it's something where we've just sort of let it happen
and wash over us and accept that somehow
this is now a part of the society we live in.
So yes, quite a number of people have come forward.
Obviously, not all of their experiences
And I think one of the things is that often,
you know, when you see these films or images,
you don't know what platform they've been created on.
I mean, the only reason why I knew it was Grok
was because it was integrated with X,
and you could see the commands that had been given
But much of the time, I think when this content is created,
most victims don't know by who or on what platform.
And I think it's that sort of sense of helplessness
that, you know, you have been violated.
And that is the word that comes up so frequently
from victims of this particular issue.
And it's not just that it's nudified.
Of course, much of my content wasn't.
Oh, but you know, it's just, it's fake,
But what people don't understand is
that it is hyperrealistic and it's your face.
It is piece of you, a piece of your soul.
It's not just pixels on the internet.
And because obviously I've worked for a long time
in violence against women and girls
and, you know, spoken to many victims of sexual assault
and to children who've been victims of child sexual abuse.
It is the lack of consent that is so disturbing.
And it can leave people with PTSD and quite deep trauma.
And there have been a number of people I've met
who have said that the world seems less safe to them
I mean, I think you've already touched on it,
but what is the biggest myth around deepfakes
that you would wish to dispel, that you now,
through experience and through the people
that you've spoken to, wish to dispel?
And even when it's not done to demean or degrade,
so even if it's done sometimes by friends,
the fact is that you haven't consented to that happen.
There is something about the human psyche,
which is that when you see yourself
so realistically created in a different situation
or scenario, that's not something you would have done,
I think it's quite discombobulating.
I think your brain can't quite process it
because your brain knows it's not true,
how this content is going to change the way
how we know what is true and what isn't true.
Now, of course, you can do fantastic things
is that we respect people's consent.
And that's why one of the things I've been working on
since this happened is to look at whether we could create
a system of consent to be manipulated by AI.
Could we create a greater right over our likeness online
so that there's a new social norm, which is that,
copy and paste that picture into an AI chatbot
and you're breaching the law if you do that.
would have a wide range of applications.
of the sexualization of women and children,
but also with political disinformation.
We are so close to a moment where somebody produces a,
of a politician saying something that they didn't,
and then that leading to real-world harm.
And so we've got to find a new social norm
that says, you know, unless for public figures
it's parody or satire, absolutely got to protect that.
But in all other instances, your picture, your voice,
and your moving image is your personal data,
and it's not for anyone else to use.
because you're touching there on new social norms
but your lawsuit is specifically under a data law.
around consensual imagery or deepfakes particularly.
So my case is brought under existing law, the GDPR,
and it contends that Grok misused my data
It didn't have consent to process my data,
the data being my face, my likeness.
that I had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
And that particularly the video of me
being prepared for sexual assault, you know,
to be on the receiving end of a product.
Let's remember this is actually a product
that has been designed by software engineers and developers,
and that actually products should not lead
and the harm that I then experienced as a result of that,
a sense that I was being harassed by, you know,
this particular creation of this particular video.
So it rests on good, solid legal grounds,
and we await the defense from SpaceX AI.
So that was going to be my next question.
I don't know how much you can say legally.
but what part of the process are you in?
What's the timeline for a resolution to this case?
it's very, very hard to pin down a timeline.
But my understanding is that we should be receiving
the response and the defense from SpaceX AI,
or a particular time that I can put on it.
After that, my understanding is the case
and, you know, if there is a case to answer,
then it will go to a court hearing.
But once again, no idea when that might be.
And I think there's lots of legal things
that I don't understand that need to be worked out
between my lawyers and their lawyers.
And have you ever had any acknowledgment on X itself
from Elon Musk or anyone at X about this case?
Has he ever spoken publicly about it?
They clearly want to challenge this case,
and so the best place to do that, I think, is in the courts
and to leave it to see whether the merits of the case,
Address city council about your case.
You didn't get to speak to anyone directly at SpaceX,
I mean, despite being subpoenaed, they didn't turn up.
So four of the other frontier AI companies
but they eventually did get their hearing
So, you know, they have now had their opportunity
to put questions and indeed did raise my case
Is it a little enraging to attend a hearing like that,
a company that you're suing who don't bother turning up?
I think it's quite rude to the elected members
that you are a business who operates in New York.
they were just four subway stops from City Hall.
So I had traveled, you know, quite a long way from England
to be there, and they couldn't be bothered to turn up,
which, yeah, it felt arrogant and a bit of a snub,
but they've now got there, so that's a good thing.
Since you made the decision to take this to courts,
there has been a number of proposals in Parliament,
for a kill switch bill at one point.
Now, I believe it's dead or it's not going very well.
So yes, there have been proposals put forth
My understanding is that the government rejected that.
There continues to be sort of strong calls for,
you know, regulation of particularly superintelligent AI.
whether it's 2%, 10%, 20% risk of human extinction
from this sort of race to superintelligence, recursive AI.
And we wouldn't allow those margins of risk
We would not allow it in bridge building
when they were testing the nuclear bomb
It feels to me as though so much of this decision-taking
is outside of democratic structures.
It is being done by some incredibly,
they have the interests of the planet at heart,
they're asked about whether that is the future of humanity
that these risks could kill humanity,
there's a sort of shrugging of the shoulders and, you know,
We'll just keep going because we want to make money,
it has been reported in the British press
that there are members of Parliament,
some of whom are working on committees
who still don't really understand what AI is.
because you are a sort of early adopter
But do you feel, working across parties,
that you're still having to explain technology
or should be making laws to protect the public from AI?
Well, look, I don't think that's only the case about AI.
and we have to deal with every single subject
We have to get our heads around things
A bit like being a journalist, actually.
But you don't have to then make laws and decisions.
So, you know, I don't want to be unfair to my colleagues.
You know, you may be a specialist in housing policy,
and you then need to get your head around AI.
But I would say that this is the most important issue
in front of anybody in Parliament or politics at the moment,
and therefore everyone needs to get their head around AI.
You know, I'm not a technology expert.
My background is in social policy, women and children.
But because we did quite a lot of work
when I was working for a children's charity,
we campaigned to get the age verification ban
for children in pornography into the OSA.
And indeed, you know, created quite a strong piece
You know, we had to get our heads around,
The problem was, of course, was that act
which there were a number of members
and we would have been a much better place
But, you know, I'm still not a tech expert,
But my view is that this is definitely the new front line
We can see that hugely in the increase
in AI-generated child sexual abuse material,
which, you know, has quadrupled, right?
And, of course, it all comes down in the end
to the people who create the products,
digital product regulation in the same way
as we would any other product regulation.
My colleague, Tom Collins, has pulled together
a brilliant white paper on digital product regulation.
I'm very, very hopeful that the government
are going to look at it really, really closely,
because there are always design choices that you can make,
and that can help to then prevent these harms.
These harms that are completely knowable,
and so it should be easy to design them out from the start.
and that was at the heart of Starmer's message
before he left office, compelling companies
these are global tools and companies.
And so, unless you have international agreement,
it is a bit like playing whack-a-mole, isn't it?
have had to sort of drop their case on 4chan
and it's one of those things where,
if you can't get the international architecture right,
and you can enforce them, of course,
but that's always up into a point where actually,
you know, the person who made that horrible video
of me being chloroformed lives in the US.
So the police aren't going to follow it up
but the police did find who they were
because, you know, it's a criminal offense, what they did.
They just weren't able to bring the charge.
We've spoken in the last 40 minutes
about really the full spectrum of human awfulness.
I don't think there's any area of it
Oh, sorry. [laughs] Welcome to my life.
Right, I do all the dark things, as I tell people.
I'm really struck by how cheerful you are despite this.
How do you remain so upbeat, hopeful, dare I suggest,
whilst dealing with all of this information?
Because you've always got to have hope for the future.
And I do have a really strong conviction
that the right group of people pushing towards a goal,
that things will always be like this.
when communities come together, you can act for change.
And I guess I've proved in some of the things
that I've been able to introduce into legislation.
We've just about to introduce our ban
which is another thing that I've been campaigning for
and introduced an amendment last year,
There are always things that we can do to change.
Also, I would say that when you work
yes, it can be quite vicariously traumatizing,
but actually the people who work within the sectors
are some of the most hopeful people,
partly because if you lose hope, then it's really bad.
And we can't because we're talking about protecting,
and our rights to be free of this harm.
It was really great to speak to you today,
and good luck fighting the good fight.
