A search is under way at the French offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X as part of a preliminary investigation into a range of alleged offences including spreading child pornography and deepfakes, prosecutors said.
The investigation was opened in January last year by the Paris prosecutors’ cyber crime unit.
It is looking into alleged “complicity” in spreading pornographic 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, and other offences.
In addition, prosecutors filed a request for “voluntary interviews” of Mr Musk and Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X from 2023 to 2025, scheduled for April 20.
Employees of the platform X have also been summoned that same week in April to be heard as witnesses, the statement said.
In a message posted on X, the Paris prosecutors’ office confirmed the ongoing searches and said it was leaving the platform while calling on followers to join on other social media.
“At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory,” prosecutors said in a statement.
The investigation was first opened following reports by a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X were likely to have distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system.
It was later expanded following additional reports that X’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok allegedly denied the Holocaust and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said.