Prosecutors summoned billionaire Elon Musk for a voluntary interview as part of a French probe into X – Copyright AFP\/File Alain JOCARD<\/p>\n
Billionaire Elon Musk has been summoned for a voluntary interview in Paris on Monday as part of a French probe into his social media platform X, though it remains unclear if he will appear.<\/p>\n
French authorities issued a summons for Musk in February as part of an investigation, launched in January 2025, into allegations that X\u2019s algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.<\/p>\n
The probe was later expanded to include an investigation into X\u2019s AI chatbot Grok\u2019s dissemination of Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes.<\/p>\n
In early February, French prosecutors searched the Paris offices of X, in what the social media giant \u2014 which has denied any wrongdoing \u2014 slammed as \u201cpoliticized\u201d raids and an \u201cabusive judicial act\u201d.<\/p>\n
At the time, Paris prosecutors also summoned Musk and then-CEO Linda Yaccarino for voluntary interviews as the \u201cde facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events\u201d, a move Musk called a \u201cpolitical attack\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year after two years at the helm of the company.<\/p>\n
In February, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said X employees had also been summoned to appear between April 20 and 24 \u201cto be heard as witnesses\u201d.<\/p>\n
But whether or not those invited for voluntary questioning appear would not be \u201can obstacle to the continuation of the investigation,\u201d the Paris prosecutor\u2019s office said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Officials have not offered any details on the location or time of Musk\u2019s scheduled interview.<\/p>\n
The French investigation focuses on several suspected criminal offences including complicity in possessing child sexual abuse material and denial of crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
The social media company in July called the probe \u201cpolitically motivated\u201d.<\/p>\n
-\u2018Serious concerns\u2019-<\/p>\n
The French investigation comes as part of a broader international backlash against Grok after it emerged that users could sexualise images of women and children using simple text prompts such as \u201cput her in a bikini\u201d or \u201cremove her clothes\u201d.<\/p>\n
It generated an estimated three million sexualised images \u2014 mostly of women, though also 23,000 that appeared to depict children \u2014 in 11 days, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit watchdog, said in late January.<\/p>\n
In a separate investigation, Britain\u2019s data regulator in February launched investigations into Musk\u2019s X and xAI over \u201cserious concerns\u201d regarding whether the companies complied with personal data laws when it came to Grok\u2019s generation of sexualised deepfakes.<\/p>\n
In late January, the European Union also hit X with a probe over Grok\u2019s generation of sexualised deepfake images of women and minors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutors summoned billionaire Elon Musk for a voluntary interview as part of a French probe into X –…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7502,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6140,5,246,3284],"class_list":["post-7501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-cybercrime","tag-france","tag-investigation","tag-x"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}