Few 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.

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