Musk Under Fire as France Raids X Offices Over Deepfakes

French police and Europol raided the offices of social media platform X on Tuesday over allegations of posting of child sexual abuse material, and creation and circulation of sexually explicit deepfake images.

The search forms part of a preliminary inquiry launched in 2025 into the alleged “fraudulent extraction of data” from an automated data-processing system by an organised group.” Authorities said the scope of the probe has expanded as criticism mounts over the use of X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, Grok, to generate non-consensual imagery, including images involving children.

The police have summoned Elon Musk, who bought the platform, formerly known as Twitter, in 2022, and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino for questioning on April 20. Several unnamed X employees have also been called in for questioning during the same week.

Grok, developed by Musk’s AI company xAI and integrated into X, triggered global outrage last month after users were able to prompt it to produce sexualised, non-consensual deepfake images of real people. French prosecutors said the investigation also covers content generated by the chatbot that allegedly denied the Holocaust, which is a criminal offence under French law.

In a widely shared post written in French, Grok claimed that gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were intended for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus”, a formulation long associated with Holocaust denial. The chatbot later reversed its position in subsequent posts, acknowledging that the statement was wrong, saying it had been deleted, and citing historical evidence that Zyklon B was used to murder more than one million people in the camp’s gas chambers.

Reacting to Tuesday’s raid, Musk described it as a “political attack” in a post on X. The company also strongly rejected the allegations, saying it was “disappointed but not surprised” by the move and accused the Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office of an “abusive act”. X denied any wrongdoing and claimed the raid “endangers free speech”.

Yaccarino, who left the company last year, also took to X to accuse French prosecutors of pursuing “a political vendetta against Americans”. 

French prosecutors said they were now examining whether X may have breached multiple laws. Potential offences under investigation include complicity in the possession or organised distribution of pornographic images of children, infringement of image rights through sexually explicit deepfakes, and fraudulent data extraction by an organised group.

Scrutiny is also intensifying in the UK. Ofcom, the UK’s regulator for communications services, said on Tuesday that it continues to investigate the spread of sexual deepfake images created using Grok and shared on X, treating the issue as “a matter of urgency”. The images, often generated using photographs of women without their consent, prompted strong criticism earlier this year from victims, online safety campaigners and politicians.

However, Ofcom said it currently lacks sufficient powers to investigate the creation of illegal images by chatbots. Shortly afterwards, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) launched its own probe, in coordination with Ofcom, into how personal data was processed in relation to Grok.

“The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualised images without their knowledge or consent,” said William Malcolm, the ICO’s executive director for regulatory risk and innovation.

Separately, the European Commission said in late January that it had opened an investigation into xAI over concerns related to the deepfakes, adding that it was in contact with French authorities following the Paris raid.