French authorities have conducted a raid on the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, as part of an investigation into alleged political meddling and the production of sexual deepfakes, according to prosecutors.
This action coincides with independent investigations launched by both the United Kingdom and the European Union, addressing concerns over the creation of sexualized deepfakes involving women and children by Musk’s AI chatbot, Grok.
Originally initiated in January 2025, the French investigation focused on allegations that X’s algorithm might have been manipulating French political affairs. The inquiry has since expanded to include Grok’s involvement in spreading Holocaust denial content and sexual deepfakes.
Musk has been requested to participate in a “voluntary interview” as part of the ongoing investigation.
The Paris prosecutor’s office stated, “Summons for voluntary interviews on April 20, 2026, in Paris have been issued to Mr. Elon Musk and Ms. Linda Yaccarino, due to their roles as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform during the relevant events.”
Responding to the raid, Musk posted on X: “This is a political attack.”
In a separate post, he suggested French authorities should instead focus on targeting sex criminals.
Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year after two years at the helm of the company.
Authorities were conducting a search on Tuesday morning at X’s French premises as part of the investigation, the prosecutor’s office added.
EU police agency Europol said it provided on-the-ground support, deploying an analyst for Tuesday’s raid.
The French investigation focuses on several suspected criminal offences, including complicity in possessing child sexual abuse material and denial of crimes against humanity.
X employees have also been summoned to appear in April “to be heard as witnesses,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said, whose office announced in a final message on X it would be leaving the platform.
A lawyer for X, Kami Haeri, declined to comment.
Backlash against AI chatbot Grok
The 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 “put her in a bikini” or “remove her clothes”.
In a separate probe, Britain’s data regulator on Tuesday launched investigations into Musk’s X and xAI to see whether the companies complied with personal data laws when it came to Grok’s generation of sexualised deepfakes.
“The reported creation and circulation of such content raises serious concerns under UK data protection law and presents a risk of significant potential harm to the public,” the Information Commissioner’s Office said in a statement.
In late January, the European Union also hit X with an investigation over Grok’s generation of sexualised deepfake images of women and minors.
Paris cybercrime prosecutors called for the police investigation in July 2025 to assess suspected crimes — including manipulating and extracting data from automated systems “as part of a criminal gang” — after receiving two complaints in January 2025.
One of those came from Eric Bothorel, a politician from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, who alleged “reduced diversity of voices and options” and “personal interventions” by Musk in the platform’s management since he took over in 2022.
Musk had, at the time, raised hackles in Europe with political sallies, including vocal backing for the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
Laurent Buanec, X’s director for France, pushed back against the investigation in January last year, saying X had “strict, clear and public rules” that protected the platform from hate speech and disinformation.
The US government also issued a harsh condemnation in July, saying it would defend the free speech of Americans against “acts of foreign censorship”.
The social media platform, which has denied the allegations, also in July called the investigation “politically motivated”.
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