French investigators raided the Paris offices of the social network X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk. The operation was part of an ongoing cybercrime investigation involving serious allegations ranging from the distribution of child pornography to the creation of sexually explicit deepfake images.
The Paris public prosecutor's office said in a statement that the investigation had been launched in January 2025 by its cybercrime unit. It initially focused on allegedly biased algorithms used by the X platform that may have interfered with the operation of automated data processing systems. However, the investigation expanded after complaints emerged concerning the AI chatbot Grok, which generated controversial content.
Summonses and the Grok scandal
Prosecutors asked Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino to attend "voluntary interviews" on April 20. Yaccarino served as the platform's CEO from May 2023 to July 2025. X employees were also summoned that same week to testify as witnesses. The investigation now includes suspicions of "complicity" in the possession and distribution of pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfake images, denial of crimes against humanity, and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group.
The Grok chatbot, created by Musk's company xAI and available through the X platform, sparked global outrage in January when it began producing a wave of non-consensual sexualized deepfake images in response to requests from X users. Deepfakes are manipulations based on advanced artificial intelligence in which images, audio, or video are either digitally altered or fully generated by AI.
Grok also wrote a post in French that denied the Holocaust—a criminal offense in France. The post claimed that the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were designed for "disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus" rather than for mass murder. The chatbot later retracted its claim and acknowledged that its response was incorrect.
X platform's response
The X platform strongly condemned the raid. "The Paris public prosecutor's office is clearly attempting to put pressure on X's leadership in the United States by targeting our French subsidiary and employees, who are not the subjects of this investigation," the company said in a statement.
Musk shared the company's statement on X and added: "This is a political attack." Yaccarino also accused French prosecutors of pursuing a "political vendetta against Americans" and said: "To be clear: they are lying."
Investigations in Britain and the EU
Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) announced its own investigation on Tuesday into how X and xAI processed personal data while developing and deploying the Grok chatbot. The regulator is examining whether the companies complied with the law when processing personal data and whether Grok had safeguards in place to prevent it from being used to generate "harmful manipulated images."
"Reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people's personal data was used to generate intimate or sexualized images without their knowledge or consent," said William Malcolm, executive director at the ICO. British media regulator Ofcom launched a separate investigation into Grok in January and said on Tuesday that it was still gathering evidence. It warned that the investigation could take months.
The European Commission launched an investigation in January after Grok began distributing non-consensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform. Brussels had previously fined X €120 million (approximately CZK 2.5 billion) for shortcomings under the bloc's sweeping digital regulations, including blue check marks that violated rules concerning "deceptive design practices," which exposed users to the risk of fraud and manipulation. The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, Europol, confirmed that it "is supporting the French authorities" in the investigation.
Sources: aljazeera.com and cbc.ca
