French prosecutors issue summons to Musk after raid on X offices in Paris

(CN) — French cybercrime investigators on Tuesday raided the Paris headquarters of the social media platform X and summoned Elon Musk to appear in April to answer questions as outrage grows over his AI chatbot Grok generating deepfake nude images, including those of children.

Tuesday’s raid was part of a broader clash between Musk, who’s expressed disdain for online regulation, and efforts by European authorities to enforce laws protecting online privacy, weeding out harmful content and reining in personalized ads.

Shortly after the raid in Paris, Great Britain’s data regulator announced its own probe into chatbot Grok’s generation of sexualized deepfakes. It followed the lead of Britain’s media regulator Ofcom, which opened a separate investigation on Jan. 12 into Grok’s sexualized images.

In late January, the European Union opened an inquiry into the sexualized imagery created by Grok, joining other governments and regulators around the world taking similar actions. The EU added the Grok inquiry to an ongoing case against X.

In the United States, numerous state attorneys general also are demanding changes at Grok to stop the generation of nonconsensual sexualized images.

Following the British outcry, Grok and X said access was restricted to generating sexualized images in Britain, but as of Jan. 16 the Guardian newspaper reported it was still possible to get Grok to make such images.

Musk’s artificial intelligence company built xAI and it is integrated into his X platform, which includes the chatbot Grok.

In previous statements, X vowed it had “zero tolerance for any forms of child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.”

Tuesday’s raid showed French authorities are ready to take the lead in challenging Musk, the world’s richest person and a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. Their case is criminal, setting it apart from other investigations.

Trump has threatened to retaliate against Europe with tariffs and other measures unless it backs away from enforcing strict online regulations.

The Paris prosecutors’ office said Musk’s companies are being probed for complicity “in the possession and distribution of sexually explicit images of minors.” Prosecutors are also examining charges related to “sexualized deepfakes,” “hate speech and antisemitic content” and “fraudulent extraction of data.”

Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino were asked to appear for “voluntary interviews” in Paris on April 20, the prosecutor’s office said. French media reported a failure to appear could lead prosecutors to issue arrest warrants.

“The voluntary interviews with executives will allow them to present their position on the facts and the compliance measures they plan to implement,” the prosecutors said in a statement. The office made its announcement on X, and then promptly deleted its X account.

X denounced the raid as a “staged” event that is part of a “politicized criminal investigation” to “exert pressure on X’s senior management in the United States by targeting our French entity and employees, who are not the focus of this investigation.” The company called the basis for the raid “baseless” and denied any wrongdoing. In the past, Musk has labeled the French probe as “politically motivated.”

The criminal case against X echoes an ongoing case French prosecutors are pursuing against Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a French-Russian dual national who was detained in Paris in 2024 over illegal content on his popular messaging app with more than 1 billion users.

“France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom,” Durov wrote on X following Tuesday’s raid. “Don’t be mistaken: this is not a free country.”

The French probe was launched in January 2025 after Éric Bothorel, a French parliamentarian from French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, filed a complaint with authorities. Bothorel accused X of “biased algorithms” that amounted to “foreign interference.”

Prosecutors eventually dismissed that portion of the probe, but kept the investigation open to examine evidence X allowed child pornography to circulate on its platform.

Last November, X drew further scrutiny from French cybercrime investigators after Grok generated French-language posts that said the 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 its X account, the chatbot acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, said it had been deleted and pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B in Auschwitz gas chambers was used to kill more than 1 million people.

However, Grok has a history of making antisemitic comments. Musk’s company took down posts from the chatbot that appeared to praise Adolf Hitler after complaints.

For now, the rhetoric over how to police the internet is strong from both sides of the Atlantic with Musk’s platforms at the center of the storm.

Alessandro Mantelero, an expert on digital law at the Politecnico di Torino, an Italian university, said the problem with X, like other U.S. tech firms, was that it developed a business model that “does not prioritize user rights.”

Still, he doubted Musk’s companies would leave or be forced out of the European market. Musk and European regulators have a “mutual interest in finding a balance,” he said in an email.

“Potential harm to children, political disinformation, etc., are factors that societies are increasingly rejecting, so companies and investors are considering these elements as critical,” he said.

He said the strategy to impose fines on tech firms was an effective method to force companies “to improve their responsible approach to digital technologies.”

“Social media are now global platforms and this increases their responsibility,” he said. “This is not only a request from the EU, but also from other countries. As with all industries, maturity means dealing with legal compliance seriously.”

He said X, like other tech firms, can adopt appropriate measures to comply with Europe’s digital laws and not hurt their bottom lines.

“If you decide to operate in a country, you have to understand and respect its law,” he said.

Obviously, he said U.S. tech companies can challenge laws they don’t like through the courts, as they do, and try to get them changed through lobbying.

Daniel Castro, a policy expert at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank in Washington, said Tuesday’s raid would escalate tensions between the U.S. and Europe over the digital sphere.

“The raid was a digital perp walk for X,” he said. “It was a pound of flesh for European regulators. And once they get a taste for blood, they will likely be back in the future.”

However, he said the U.S. would vigorously defend its digital platforms on free expression grounds. He said U.S. lawmakers are looking at “allowing lawsuits against Europeans who facilitate restrictions on free speech of Americans.”

He said the raid would be interpreted by tech companies as though they “face a harsh and unwelcoming legal environment” in Europe.

“That’s not the message Europeans should be sending if they want to grow their digital services sector,” he said in an email. “Unfortunately, European regulators seem to investigate platforms when they don’t see the outcomes that they would prefer. That creates arbitrary enforcement.”

Nonetheless, he added that Musk was “not above the law” and that his companies should be held accountable for violating European laws.

But he said it would be a mistake for Europe to take overly drastic steps against X, such as banning the platform.

“While many Europeans might dislike some of X’s content moderation practices, silencing the voices of tens of millions of Europeans would be a terrible look for regulators, especially those who claim to support free expression,” he said. “Fines should be the next step. But they should be reasonable and proportional.”

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.