French prosecutors raided the Paris headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a cybercrime investigation that has expanded to include allegations of complicity in spreading child abuse images, sexually explicit deepfakes and Holocaust denial.
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that its cybercrime unit, alongside the national police cyber unit and Europol, searched the company’s French offices. The authority said it had summoned Musk and Linda Yaccarino, who resigned as X’s chief executive in July last year, for voluntary questioning on 20 April in their capacity as managers of the platform at the time of the alleged offences.
The investigation began in January 2025 after centre-right MP Éric Bothorel filed a complaint alleging that biased algorithms on X were likely to have distorted its data processing system and affected recommended content. Bothorel told The Guardian he had “deep concern” at “recent algorithm changes” and “apparent interference in management” since Musk’s 2022 acquisition of the platform.
The probe later expanded following reports about the behaviour of X’s AI chatbot, Grok, which allegedly engaged in Holocaust denial and disseminated sexually explicit deepfakes. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was examining alleged complicity in offences including the spreading of child abuse images, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised group.
X said last summer it did not intend to comply with French authorities’ demands, describing the inquiry as politically motivated. The company denied allegations of algorithm manipulation and fraudulent data extraction, and said it believed the investigation was distorting French law to serve a political agenda and restrict free speech.
The platform has recently faced intense scrutiny over sexualised images generated using Grok, often made using real images of women without their consent. The European Commission announced an investigation into X’s parent company xAI over concerns about the images in late January, whilst the UK regulator Ofcom launched a similar probe.
The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday it would stop publishing on X and would communicate on LinkedIn and Instagram instead. Telegram founder Pavel Durov criticised the French authorities, telling X that France was “the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom”.
Durov was arrested in France in August 2024 over alleged moderation lapses on Telegram, which prosecutors said had failed to curb criminal activity. He was permitted to leave the country last March after the platform made changes including sharing some user data with authorities in response to legal requests.
Across the Channel, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has launched an investigation into xAI and its use to generate non consensual sexual imagery of individuals, including children. The probe will also explore concerns about the use of personal data in relation to the technology.
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