Indian women’s cricketer and World Cup winner Pratika Rawal on Monday flagged the circulation of edited and unsolicited images of her on social media.

Rawal took to X to express her concern after modified pictures of her went viral online.

In a post addressing Grok, a free AI assistant platform integrated with Elon Musk-owned X, she asked the chatbot to deny any third-party requests to edit or distribute her images.

She wrote, “Hey @grok, I DO NOT authorize you to take, modify, or edit ANY photo of mine, whether those published in the past or the upcoming ones I post. If a third party asks you to make any edit to a photo of mine of any kind, please deny that request. Thanks.”

Grok responded and said, “Understood, Pratika. I respect your privacy and will not use, modify, or edit any of your photos without explicit permission. If any such request comes up, it'll be denied. Thanks for letting me know.”

However, the X account has not been independently verified, so the authenticity of the post remains unconfirmed.

Rawal enjoyed a stellar Women’s World Cup 2025, scoring 308 runs in seven matches to finish as India’s second-highest run-scorer in the tournament. But the attention following India’s title win has had a darker side, with several altered and edited images of the cricketer circulating widely on social media platforms.

Earlier on Friday, the government issued a stern notice to X, directing it to immediately remove all vulgar and unlawful content, especially content generated by its AI app Grok, or face legal action.

The ministry of electronics and information technology issued the notice to the chief compliance officer for X’s India operations, citing failure to observe statutory due diligence obligations under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

“...X is hereby directed to... remove or disable access, without delay, to all content already generated or disseminated in violation of applicable laws, in strict compliance with the timelines prescribed under the IT Rules, 2021, without vitiating the evidence in any manner,” the order dated 2 January said.

The ministry has also sought an action-taken report to ensure immediate compliance and to prevent the hosting, generation, publication, transmission, sharing or uploading of obscene, nude, indecent and sexually explicit content through the misuse of AI-based services such as Grok.

The government action followed a letter from Shiv Sena UBT MP Priyanka Chaturvedi to information technology minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, in which she flagged instances of Grok complying with user requests to digitally alter pictures of women and depict them as unclothed, partially clad or in sexually compromised states.

Sharing her letter on X earlier in the day, Chaturvedi alleged that men were using fake profiles to post pictures of women and issuing prompts to Grok to “minimise their clothing and sexualise them”.

She said the trend was also targeting women who post their own photographs online, raising serious concerns over safety and privacy.

“Our country cannot be a bystander to women’s dignity being violated publicly and digitally with zero consequences under the garb of creativity and innovation,” she wrote in the letter.

“As a nation we must take this up on a priority to ensure that women are not the victims of such openly criminal practices and further silence and push them out of these platforms,” she added.

The issue has also triggered alarm internationally. The flood of nearly nude images of real people has led ministers in France to report X to prosecutors and regulators.

In a statement on Friday, they said the “sexual and sexist” content circulating on the platform was “manifestly illegal.”