{"id":31426,"date":"2026-05-07T19:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31426\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T19:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T19:52:09","slug":"french-prosecutors-seek-charges-against-elon-musk-and-x-over-sexual-abuse-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/31426\/","title":{"rendered":"French prosecutors seek charges against Elon Musk and X over sexual abuse images"},"content":{"rendered":"

French prosecutors are seeking charges against Elon Musk and his social platform X for child sexual abuse images on the platform, deepfakes, disinformation and complicity in denying crimes against humanity by the platform\u2019s artificial intelligence system, Grok.<\/p>\n

The Paris public prosecutor\u2019s office said Wednesday it has opened an investigation into X on charges including complicity in possessing and distributing child sexual abuse images and unlawfully collecting personal data. It\u2019s also investigating charges of disseminating non-consensual images or other content and denial of crimes against humanity. <\/p>\n

X and its parent company SpaceX did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday. <\/p>\n

The investigation comes less than three weeks after Musk and Linda Yaccarino<\/a> \u2014 the former CEO of X \u2014 were summoned for \u201cvoluntary interviews\u201d to discuss the allegations. They did not show up, but French authorities said this wouldn\u2019t hinder the investigation. <\/p>\n

Musk was summoned after a search took place<\/a> 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\u2019s office. Musk and Yaccarino have been invited in their capacities as managers of X at the time of the events investigated. Yaccarino was CEO<\/a> from May 2023 until July 2025.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Elon<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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 AI system, Grok<\/a>, generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s looking into alleged \u201ccomplicity\u201d in possessing and spreading sexual abuse images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group, among other charges.<\/p>\n

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

Grok also wrote in a widely shared post in French that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau<\/a> death camp were designed for \u201cdisinfection with Zyklon B against typhus\u201d rather than for mass murder \u2014 language long associated with Holocaust denial.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In March, the Paris prosecutor\u2019s office alerted the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, suggesting \u201cthat 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 \u2014 potentially constituting criminal offenses,\u201d prosecutors said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French prosecutors are seeking charges against Elon Musk and his social platform X for child sexual abuse images…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[25,309,5322,199,140,1477,6364,18946,7508,7832,4731,7837,20220,8535,134,1481,9032,2899],"class_list":{"0":"post-31426","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-xai","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-child-abuse","11":"tag-crime","12":"tag-elon-musk","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-grok","15":"tag-indictments","16":"tag-information-security","17":"tag-linda-yaccarino","18":"tag-misinformation","19":"tag-paris","20":"tag-prisons","21":"tag-sexual-abuse","22":"tag-technology","23":"tag-u-s-news","24":"tag-x-corp","25":"tag-xai"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}