What led one MP to go up against Elon Musk?

A Suffolk MP is taking on one of the richest men in the world - Elon Musk.

Jess Asato, the Labour MP for Lowestoft, announced on Wednesday she planned to take legal action over "disgusting" deepfake images of her, allegedly created by the chatbot Grok on Musk's X platform.

She said she felt she had been targeted after speaking out against the bot and sexualised deepfakes it had created of other women.

But how big of an issue are deepfakes? What do people think of Asato's stand? And what has Musk said?

Back in January, Asato said she had been left violated when an image of her was manipulated using AI technology so that she appeared in a bikini.

She posted on X, and the BBC saw numerous examples of such images being posted in the comments.

However, it had not been clear if the image, and those posted in the reply, had been created using the AI chatbot Grok.

It came at a time when other women reported similar sexualised images of themselves on the social media platform, with some describing it as "dehumanising".

Then, on Wednesday, Asato revealed she had launched legal action against Musk's xAI company, which created Grok.

She said her claim was about seeking redress for "the harms that were created while Grok was creating harms".

The claim filed at the High Court is being brought under the Data Protection Act and for tortious misuse of private information.

What is Grok and deepfake content?

Grok is an AI chatbot developed by Musk's xAI firm, and was first released in 2023.

It can be used to generate text, images and video, and it has been integrated into the social media network X.

Grok has been heavily criticised in recent months as it was used in similar examples to Asato to undress women and put them in sexual positions without consent.

For example, explicit images of journalist and campaigner Jess Davis were created without her consent on the software and Dr Daisy Dixon, a lecturer in philosophy at Cardiff University, experienced the same.

These are known as deepfakes, which are videos, pictures and other content made using AI to make it look real.

It has since become illegal to create or request a non-consensual deepfake image of an adult in the UK.

What has the wider reaction been?

When Asato first raised the issue of the deepfakes made of her earlier in the year, it generated huge discussions on her social media pages.

On Wednesday, there was even more when she announced her legal action, both in support of her stand and otherwise.

It prompted Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to also put out his own statement, detailing that he was "100%" behind her and she was "absolutely right" in her action.

Rachel Kingsbrook, 47, lives over the border in Cantley in Norfolk, but has been following Asato, describing her as "extremely brave".

She believed people "failed to understand" that deepfakes had real consequences for victims, and for the perpetrators it was about power and control.

"It shows once again that when victims and survivors seek help, or support, or accountability, they are silenced, or ridiculed, or attacked," she added.

Jade, who did not want her surname published, is 36 and lives in Halesworth.

While she is also not one of Asato's constituents, she said it was "incredibly empowering" to see her making a stand and that deepfakes "deeply" concerned her.

"Whether an intimate image is a manipulated deepfake or a real photograph shared without consent, the real-world harm is identical," she said.

"It strips victims of their privacy, dignity, and baseline safety."

How big of an issue are deepfakes?

A report found that deepfakes had increased by 550% between 2019 and 2023.

According to the Fawcett Society, a charity that campaigns for women's rights and gender equality, more than 95% of deepfake content online is pornographic and "overwhelmingly" targeting women.

UN Women, the UN organisation that upholds women's human rights, has called it a "global crisis", where prosecutions against the issue are rare and survivors are often re-traumatised when they do attempt to seek help.

If you, or someone you know, has been affected by sexual abuse, organisations listed at BBC Action Line may be able to help.

Dr Tanya Horek, a professor of film and feminist media studies at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, who specialises in AI deepfakes, said: "We're living in this moment where violence against girls and women is a crisis.

"It's a national emergency, as has been declared, and I think AI-facilitated sexual abuse is a huge part of this."

Horek added that the term deepfake often led people to think the harm caused was not real, and the victims often did not know who was behind the image.

She believed thinking about the language around the issue, education in schools and tackling deep-rooted societal misogyny could start to address things.

Katherine Ahluwalia, of domestic abuse charity Restore Women's Aid in Bury St Edmunds, said deepfakes were part of a wider issue related to social media.

"What we've seen is a lot of stuff that people or young people are seeing on the internet, like things like the 'manosphere', pornography, social media included in that, is fuelling misogyny, which in turn will then fuel domestic abuse and other crimes as well," she explained.

"You'll see it nationally, there's stats on it, the number of sexual assaults in schools, like peer-on-peer sexual assaults, is increasing year on year.

"So all of this is linked. You can't separate it, and those sort of misogynistic beliefs do feed into domestic abuse and sexual assaults."

Maryam Yaqub is the AI lead at the Fawcett Society and said women and men had differing opinions on AI, with women expressing some "mistrust".

"One of the things that I think is important to note is that female politicians being silenced in this way, it's not something new - in the sense that sexualising a woman who has a voice and reducing that woman to just her sexuality has been a tool that has been used against women throughout history," she said.

"Now it's being done in a way that feels just like anyone can do it."

She believed that while the government had criminalised creating deepfakes without consent, a more "proactive" approach was needed rather than a "reactive" one.

Is it a wider issue across the world?

It is not just here in the UK where deepfakes are being discussed.

Over in the United States, where xAI's headquarters is based, the mother of one of Musk's children is also suing him over them.

Ashley St Clair filed a lawsuit back in January over sexualised deepfakes created on X, to which xAI countersued stating that she had violated their terms of service by filing her lawsuit.

President Donald Trump last year did sign the Take It Down Act that criminalises posting intimate images - real or AI-generated - online without an individual's consent, and it requires technology companies to remove the content within 48 hours.

What has xAI and Musk said?

Despite numerous approaches from the BBC for a request for comment in response to Asato's action, xAI has not responded.

Earlier in the year, however, action was taken by the company to stop Grok being able to edit photos of real people to show them in revealing clothing in jurisdictions where it is illegal, such as the UK.

Musk himself said: "Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content."

Asato's legal case at the High Court was filed on Wednesday.

A future hearing will be set - the details of which have not yet been shared.

Do you have a story suggestion for Suffolk? Contact us below.