A probe targeting Elon Musk and his social network X has been upgraded to a criminal investigation by French cybercrime authorities, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced Thursday.
Neither Musk nor former X CEO Linda Yaccarino complied with summons requiring them to appear before French authorities on April 20, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.
At the heart of the case, which traces back to a request by French Member of Parliament Éric Bothorel in early 2025, are complaints that X deployed algorithmic tools to meddle in French politics, alongside allegations that Musk and X were aware that the AI chatbot Grok was being used on the platform to produce and circulate Holocaust denials and sexually explicit deepfake imagery created without subjects’ consent.
When French authorities searched X’s Paris office in February, Musk dismissed the case as a “political attack.”
The chatbot is a product of xAI, Musk’s AI venture, which took ownership of X and has since folded into SpaceX, his reusable rocket company, through a merger completed earlier this year.
Parallel inquiries are underway elsewhere: CNBC reports that authorities in multiple countries, along with California’s attorney general, have opened their own investigations into whether Musk and his companies took deliberate steps to enable explicit deepfake content — up to and including child sexual abuse material — involving people who never gave their consent.
The U.S. Department of Justice communicated to French officials in April that it would refuse to cooperate in any inquiry into Musk or X, and charged that France was overstepping by targeting an American company, CNBC reported.
Spokespeople for Musk and SpaceX haven’t commented.