French prosecutors are pursuing legal action against Elon Musk and his social media platform, X, citing serious allegations related to the presence of child sexual abuse images, the distribution of deepfakes, misinformation, and the platform’s artificial intelligence, Grok, allegedly denying crimes against humanity.
On Wednesday, the Paris public prosecutor’s office announced the initiation of an investigation into X, focusing on charges such as complicity in the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse images, illegal personal data collection, failure to ensure data security, and the dissemination of non-consensual content. Additionally, the investigation addresses allegations of Grok’s denial of crimes against humanity.
Neither X nor its parent company, SpaceX, responded to requests for comment on Thursday.
This investigation follows a recent development where Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino were invited for “voluntary interviews” to discuss these allegations. Although they did not attend, French authorities confirmed that the absence would not impede the investigation’s progress.
The summons for Musk came after a search conducted in February at X’s French offices, part of a broader investigation initiated in January 2025 by the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit. Both Musk and Yaccarino were called upon due to their managerial roles during the period under investigation. Notably, Yaccarino held the CEO position from May 2023 to July 2025.
The investigation was prompted by reports from a French lawmaker, raising concerns about potentially biased algorithms on X that might have skewed automated data processing systems. The scope of the inquiry broadened after Grok reportedly produced posts that negated the Holocaust, a criminal act in France, and circulated sexually explicit deepfakes.
It’s looking into alleged “complicity” 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.
Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage this year after it pumped out a torrent of sexualized 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 U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, 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 offenses,” prosecutors said.
