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French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into 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’s artificial intelligence system, Grok.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office said on Thursday it was escalating its investigation into a criminal probe.
French authorities raided the X Paris offices in February, which Musk said was a “political attack”.
France opened an investigation into X in early 2025, which focused on the manipulation of algorithms to influence and interfere in French politics as well as allegations that the AI system, Grok, generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes.
Euronews Next has contacted X for comment.
Musk and Linda Yaccarino — the former CEO of X — were summoned for “voluntary interviews” to discuss the allegations on April 20. They did not show up, but French authorities said this would not hinder the investigation.
Musk was summoned after a search took place 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’s office. Musk and Yaccarino have been invited in their capacities as managers of X at the time of the events investigated. Yaccarino was CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.
French prosecutors are 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 organised 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. It acknowledged that its earlier reply was wrong, saying it had been deleted. It pointed to historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to kill more than 1 million people in the Auschwitz gas chambers.
In March, the Paris prosecutor’s office alerted the US 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 offences,” prosecutors said.