BRUSSELS — Artificial intelligence apps that allow users to undress or nudify people should be banned in the EU, dozens of European Parliament lawmakers have said.

A group of 57 lawmakers from across the political spectrum has called for a ban in a note to the European Commission seen by POLITICO, after widespread outrage at a proliferation of sexualized deepfake images created by the Grok bot and hosted on Elon Musk’s social network X.

“Recent shocking reports of AI-powered nudity applications, such as Grok on X, but also other freely available tools online, show an increase in AI-driven tools allowing users to generate manipulated intimate images of individuals without their consent,” they write.

Such systems should “be banned from the EU market” under the bloc’s AI law, they say.

The call is signed by lawmakers from groups including the center-right European People’s Party, the center-left Socialists and Democrats, the Greens, the liberal Renew and The Left.

Following the scandal over X, the Commission requested additional information and ordered X to retain all Grok-related documents and data until the end of the year.

X announced late Wednesday that it would stop users from “editing of images of real people in revealing clothes such as bikinis.” Yet POLITICO was able to verify that users in Brussels, Paris and London were still able to generate images of people in bikinis on Thursday morning.

The lawmakers said it wasn’t sufficient to tackle the problem using only the bloc’s platform law, the Digital Services Act, which sets content moderation standards for platforms such as X.

They asked the Commission to “confirm these systems are banned from the EU market under the AI Act or other EU legislation.” Under the AI law, certain AI systems are prohibited — specifically those that pose a risk to people’s health, safety, and fundamental rights.

“These AI-powered tools facilitate widespread sexual violence against women and children,” said Dutch Greens lawmaker Kim van Sparrentak, who led the initiative.

“Police investigation of perpetrators after the damage is done is not enough to prevent crimes against women and children at this scale. These apps must be banned from the European market immediately.”