French prosecutors summon Elon Musk over alleged child abuse images on X

The world’s richest man and Linda Yaccarino – the former chief executive of X – were on Monday summoned for “voluntary interviews”, while other employees of the platform were scheduled to be heard as witnesses throughout this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

It remains unclear whether Musk and Yaccarino will travel to Paris. A spokesperson for X did not respond to questions from Associated Press and Yaccarino’s current company, eMed, did not answer a request sent to the press email.

Musk was summoned after a search took place in February at the French premises of X as part of an investigation opened in January 2025 by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office. Musk and Yaccarino have been invited in their capacities as managers of X at the time of the events investigated. Yaccarino was CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.

“These voluntary interviews with the executives are intended to allow them to present their position regarding the facts and, where appropriate, the compliance measures they plan to implement,” prosecutors said. “At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the ultimate objective of ensuring that platform X complies with French law, insofar as it operates within the national territory.”

Asked whether Musk would risk sanctions if he skipped the hearing, the Paris prosecutor’s office declined to comment.

French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system. It expanded after the platform’s AI system, Grok, generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes.

The investigation is looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised group, among other charges.

Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage this year after it pumped out a torrent of sexualised nonconsensual deepfake images in response to requests from X users.

Grok also wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder – language long associated with Holocaust denial.

In later posts on X, the chatbot reversed itself and acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, saying it had been deleted, and pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to kill more than 1 million people in Auschwitz gas chambers.

In March, the Paris prosecutor’s office alerted the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) – the US federal agency responsible for regulating and overseeing financial markets – suggesting “that the controversy surrounding sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok may have been deliberately orchestrated to artificially boost the value of the companies X and xAI – potentially constituting criminal offences,” prosecutors said.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said this could have been done “ahead of the planned June 2026 stock market listing of the new entity formed by the merger of SpaceX and xAI, at a time when company X was clearly losing momentum”.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the justice department told French law enforcement authorities it would not facilitate their efforts to investigate Musk’s X. The newspaper reported that the justice department’s office of international affairs, in a two-page letter last week, accused the French of inappropriately using its justice system to interfere with an American business.

“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” said the letter quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

The letter also said France’s requests for US assistance “constitute an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform”.

French judicial authorities did not respond to requests for comments.