Prosecutors have raided the French headquarters of Elon Musk’s social media platform X and summoned the tech billionaire and the company’s former chief executive for questioning as part of an investigation into alleged cybercrime.
“A search is under way by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office, the national police cyber unit and Europol,” the Paris prosecutors’ office said in a post on X on Tuesday, adding that it would no longer be publishing on the network.
It added in a statement that Musk and Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for voluntary questioning “in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year.
The prosecutor’s office said it was examining “alleged complicity” in offences related to the platform, including the spreading of child abuse images and sexually explicit deepfakes, the denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised group.
The French authority launched its investigation in January last year after a centre-right MP filed a complaint alleging that biased algorithms on the platform were likely to have distorted its data processing system and affected the kind of content it recommended.
The MP, Éric Bothorel, expressed “deep concern” at “recent algorithm changes” and “apparent interference in [X’s] management” since Musk bought it in 2022. Other complaints said the changes had led to a surge in “nauseating political content”.
The investigation was later expanded after reports denouncing the behaviour of X’s AI chatbot, Grok, which allegedly engaged in Holocaust denial and disseminated sexually explicit deepfakes.
X has been approached for comment on Tuesday’s raid.
The company said last summer it did not intend to comply with the demands of French authorities in relation to the inquiry, which it described as “politically motivated”, and denied allegations of algorithm manipulation and “fraudulent data extraction”.
The platform added that it believed the investigation was “distorting French law to serve a political agenda, and ultimately restrict free speech”. It said it was committed to “defending its fundamental rights, protecting user data and resisting political censorship”.
