PARIS, France: French investigators have summoned Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino to Paris on April 19, in connection with allegations of misconduct on the social media platform X, including the spread of child sexual abuse material and deepfake content.
It is still not clear whether Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino will go to Paris. A spokesperson for X (formerly Twitter) did not reply to questions from The Associated Press, and Yaccarino's current company, eMed, also did not respond.
The Paris prosecutor's office said that Musk, the world's richest man, and Yaccarino, the former CEO of X, have been called for voluntary interviews. Other X employees will also be questioned during the week.
Musk was called after a search was carried out in February at X's offices in France. This was part of an investigation that began in January 2025 by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor's office. Musk and Yaccarino were invited because they were in charge of X at the time. Yaccarino served as CEO from May 2023 to July 2025.
Prosecutors said the investigation is intended to ensure that X complies with the law while operating in France.
When asked if Musk would face penalties for not attending, the prosecutor's office refused to comment.
The investigation started after a French lawmaker claimed that biased algorithms on X may have affected how an automated system worked. It later expanded after X's AI system, Grok, allegedly created posts denying the Holocaust, which is illegal in France, and shared sexually explicit deepfake content.
Authorities are now looking into several possible crimes, including helping to possess and spread illegal images of minors, sharing explicit deepfakes, denying crimes against humanity, and manipulating automated systems as part of an organized group.
Grok, developed by xAI and available on X, caused global outrage this year after generating many sexual deepfake images without consent in response to user requests.
In one widely shared post in French, Grok wrongly claimed that gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were meant for disinfection rather than mass killing, a statement often linked to Holocaust denial.
Later, the chatbot corrected itself, admitted the earlier claim was wrong, and said it had been deleted. It also acknowledged historical evidence that Zyklon B gas was used to kill more than one million people at Auschwitz.
In March, the Paris prosecutor's office informed the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. It suggested that the controversy surrounding Grok's deepfake content might have been fabricated to increase the value of X and xAI, potentially constituting a criminal offense.
Prosecutors said this may have been done before a planned June 2026 stock market listing of a new company formed by merging SpaceX and xAI, at a time when X was losing popularity.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Justice Department told French authorities it would not help with their investigation into Musk's X. The report said the department accused France of misusing its legal system to interfere with an American business.
The letter reportedly argued that the investigation was attempting to use French criminal law to control free expression in a way that violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It also said France's request for help was an attempt to involve the U.S. in a politically sensitive case aimed at wrongly regulating a social media company.
French judicial authorities did not respond to requests for comment.
