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

本文为原文前 6,000 字符的节选翻译，完整内容请查看原文。

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.

很少有人比杰斯·阿萨托（Jess Asato）更了解当前的深度伪造（deepfake）泛滥问题。这位英国工党议员多年来一直致力于反对利用技术手段虐待妇女和女童。然而，在2025年臭名昭著的“Grok深度伪造丑闻”期间公开批评埃隆·马斯克后，阿萨托发现自己陷入了她一直试图阻止的危机之中。

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.

这位议员令人不安且带有侮辱性的深度伪造图像被广泛传播，其中一张似乎描绘了性侵犯场景。当阿萨托向X平台举报这些内容时，该平台多次驳回了她的投诉。因此，她决定将这场斗争转移到其他地方：法庭。她目前正在对马斯克的xAI采取法律行动，主张该公司在未经她同意的情况下非法使用了她的肖像。此案可能有助于确立一个先例，即当人工智能公司的产品造成伤害时，必须追究其责任。

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?

对阿萨托来说，这不仅是私事，而且并非全新的领域。在进入议会之前，她曾多年在慈善机构工作，支持家庭暴力受害者和弱势儿童。这段经历塑造了她的政治生涯，也促使她推动在网络上为妇女和儿童提供更强有力的保护。现在，她正面临更令人不安的问题：当助长虐待的技术变得无处不在，托管这些内容的平台拒绝干预，而受害者只能独自反击时，会发生什么？

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.)

对阿萨托而言，利害攸关的不仅仅是单张图像的滥用。当人工智能几乎可以制造任何东西时，同意权是否还有意义？开发这些工具的公司是否能为其行为负责？阿萨托押注法律能够赶上技术的发展，并准备与马斯克对簿公堂以寻求答案。（xAI未立即回应《连线》杂志的置评请求。）

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.

此外，在继续阅读之前，请注意本次采访涉及性侵犯和儿童性虐待的相关内容。本次采访为篇幅和清晰度进行了编辑。

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?

罗西·斯瓦什（ROSIE SWASH）：杰斯，在深入探讨之前，我想先问几个热身问题。请谈谈你的背景，你是如何成为洛斯托夫特（Lowestoft）选区议员的？

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.

杰斯·阿萨托：当然。我是在东安格利亚的诺福克和萨福克长大的，家庭氛围并不怎么谈论政治。1997年，当托尼·布莱尔谈论“教育、教育、还是教育”时，我迷上了政治。亲身经历过教育体系后，我觉得我们可以做得更好。于是我加入了工党，并参与了当地的组织活动。

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.

在进入议会之前，我曾在英国最大的儿童慈善机构工作了三年，负责政策和公共事务，试图代表国内最弱势的儿童推动立法变革。在此之前的六年里，我曾在一家名为SafeLives的家庭暴力慈善机构工作，我们做了大量工作，试图改善家庭暴力受害者的处境，特别是通过《家庭暴力法案》。

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.

妇女和儿童这两个议题已成为我在议会关注的焦点，我非常明确，我来到这里的理由，或者说我的使命，就是为妇女和儿童发声。

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?

这是一个很好的切入点，让我们开始谈谈今年发生的事情。2026年初，有广泛报道称xAI的聊天机器人Grok被用于制作儿童和妇女的色情化图像，并在X平台上流传。当时你对深度伪造被以这种方式利用的现象了解多少？

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.

非常了解，事实上，我多年来一直与遭受深度伪造侵害的受害者合作。自人工智能出现以来，这种情况就一直在女性身上发生。此外，儿童面临的风险也在增加，他们既可能成为儿童性虐待素材的受害者，也可能使用“脱衣”工具（nudification tools）去侵害其他儿童，从而使自己陷入犯罪，因为这些工具非常容易获取，而且通常是免费的。

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.

因此，在Grok事件发生之前，我就已经非常清楚人工智能深度伪造对妇女和儿童造成的巨大伤害。这是一种已知的危害，正因如此，许多其他公司的工具已经采取措施，阻止其被用于制作此类内容。

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.

市面上有很多工具，如果你输入“脱衣”或“脱掉这个人的衣服”，工具会拒绝执行。就在这样的环境下，Grok出现了。

Was there a particularly egregious example or incident prior to Grok when you became aware of deepfakes that really stuck with you?

在Grok之前，有没有什么特别恶劣的例子或事件让你对深度伪造印象深刻？

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.

有一位非常出色的活动家，化名叫朱迪（Jodie）。我想大概是听了朱迪的经历，她被深度伪造了，有人这样做对她来说是一种极大的侮辱，后来她发现那其实是一个朋友。这真是对信任的背叛。

These things destroy not just the individual involved, but often families and everyone around them too.

这些事情不仅摧毁了当事人，往往还会摧毁他们的家庭以及周围的所有人。

For people who don’t know, who exactly was Jodie? Is this a constituent of yours or someone who came forward to you specifically?

对于不知道的人，朱迪到底是谁？她是你的选民，还是专门向你求助的人？

No, no, no. She’s a very well-known campaigner on this issue. That’s not her real name.

不，不，不。她是这个问题上非常知名的活动家。那不是她的真名。

I know it sounds obvious, but what exactly is nudification?

我知道这听起来很显而易见，但到底什么是“脱衣”技术（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.

这就是你要求人工智能工具获取一个真实人的图像或视频，并利用生成式人工智能使该人处于裸体、半裸状态，或进行色情行为。由于人工智能图像具有照片般的真实感，现在越来越难以分辨什么是伪造图像。

It can often look incredibly, incredibly real.

它看起来往往极其、极其真实。

So what was it particularly about the Grok scandal earlier this year that made you want to raise this in the House of Commons?

那么，今年早些时候的Grok丑闻中，究竟是什么让你想要在下议院提出这个问题？

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.

事实在于，我们早就知道，通过设计人工智能工具来拒绝执行此类操作，是可以阻止这种情况发生的。

This was completely avoidable. That’s why I spoke out, but also because I’d just spent a year and a half campaigning to get a ban on nudification apps, and here was an all-purpose AI tool becoming a nudification app.

这完全是可以避免的。这就是我发声的原因，也是因为我刚刚花了一年半的时间争取禁止“脱衣”应用程序，而现在一个通用的人工智能工具却变成了一个“脱衣”应用程序。

It just felt to me

对我来说，这感觉……