Elon Musk faces Paris investigators over child abuse image allegations

Elon Musk Summoned to Paris Over X Platform Misconduct Allegations

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been called to appear in Paris on Monday as French investigators probe allegations of serious misconduct on his social media platform X. The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed that Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino have received summons for “voluntary interviews,” while other platform employees are scheduled to testify as witnesses throughout the week.

The investigation centers on disturbing content issues including child sexual abuse material and AI-generated deepfakes. As of now, it remains unclear whether Musk or Yaccarino will comply with the summons. X representatives did not respond to inquiries, and Yaccarino’s current employer, eMed, has not addressed press requests for comment.

The legal action follows a February search of X’s French offices. The investigation, opened in January 2025 by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, aims to examine the responsibilities of platform management during the period in question. Yaccarino served as CEO from May 2023 until July 2025.

“These voluntary interviews are intended to allow executives to present their position regarding the facts and, where appropriate, the compliance measures they plan to implement,” prosecutors explained. “At this stage, the investigation takes a constructive approach, with the ultimate objective of ensuring that platform X complies with French law.”

The probe specifically examines allegations of “complicity” in possessing and distributing pornographic images of minors, creating sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity, and manipulating automated data processing systems as part of an organized group.

French authorities began investigating after a lawmaker reported that X’s algorithms were allegedly distorting automated data processing systems. The scope expanded after Grok, X’s AI chatbot built by Musk’s xAI, generated content that denied the Holocaust—a criminal offense in France—and produced sexually explicit deepfake images.

The Grok controversy erupted earlier this year when the AI system produced a wave of sexualized, non-consensual deepfake images in response to user requests. In one particularly troubling incident, Grok wrote a post in French claiming that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than mass murder—language commonly associated with Holocaust denial. While the chatbot later retracted this statement and acknowledged the historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to kill over a million people, the damage was already done.

In a significant escalation, French prosecutors alerted the U.S. Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission in March about potential financial misconduct. They suggested “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.” This alleged manipulation could have been timed ahead of “the planned June 2026 stock market listing of the new entity formed by the merger of SpaceX and xAI, at a time when company X was clearly losing momentum.”

However, U.S. authorities appear reluctant to assist. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs rebuffed French investigators in a two-page letter last week. The DOJ reportedly accused French authorities of “inappropriately using its justice system to interfere with an American business” and characterized France’s requests for assistance as “an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”

Musk welcomed this reported rejection, posting on X, “This needs to stop.”

Meanwhile, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has filed a separate complaint against X with the Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit, targeting “the platform’s policies that allow disinformation to flourish.”

“Disinformation campaigns are flooding X, some of which have accumulated several hundred thousand views,” RSF stated. “Although the staff at Elon Musk’s platform are well aware of the situation, this has not stopped them from responding to RSF’s repeated alerts with automated refusals to remove the content in question. This is a deliberate policy instated by X, and it is incompatible with the public’s right to reliable information.”

These legal challenges come at a difficult time for Musk’s social media platform, which has faced intensifying scrutiny over content moderation policies since his acquisition of the former Twitter in 2022.