Liv McMahonTechnology journalist
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The French offices of Elon Musk’s
The prosecutor’s office also said that Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino were summoned to hearings in April.
In another development, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced an investigation into Musk’s AI tool Grok over its “potential to produce harmful sexualized images and video content.”
Writing on X, Musk said the raid was a “political attack.”
The company declared in a statement said he was “disappointed” but “not surprised” and accused the Paris prosecutor’s office of an “abusive act”.
X also denied any wrongdoing and said the raid “endangered freedom of expression.”
The investigation began in January 2025 when French prosecutors began examining content recommended by X’s algorithm, before being expanded in July of that year to include Elon Musk’s controversial chatbot Grok.
Yaccarino also spoke to X to accuse French prosecutors of waging “a political vendetta against the Americans.”
“Let’s be clear: They’re lying,” added Yaccarino, who left the company last year.
Following Tuesday’s raid, French prosecutors say they are now investigate whether X has broken the law in several areas.
Among the potential crimes it said it would investigate were complicity in the possession or organized distribution of pornographic images of children, violation of people’s image rights with sexual deepfakes, and fraudulent data extraction by an organized group.
New British investigation
Meanwhile, British authorities have provided an update on their investigations into sexual deepfakes created by Grok and shared on X.
The images – often made from real images of women without their consent – have sparked a barrage of criticism in January from victims, online safety activists and politicians.
The company finally intervened to prevent the practice, after Ofcom and others launched investigations.
In an update published on Tuesday, Ofcom said it was continuing its investigation into the platform and treating it as “a matter of urgency”.
But he added that he was currently unable to investigate Grok’s creation of illegal images in the case because he did not have sufficient powers regarding chatbots.
However, shortly after, the ICO declared he launched his own probein collaboration with Ofcom, in the processing of personal data in relation to Grok.
“The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data was used to generate intimate or sexualized images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this,” said William Malcolm, the ICO’s executive director for regulatory risk and innovation.
A Commission spokesperson said it was in contact with France over the search of X’s Paris office.
“Not a free country”
Pavel Durov, founder of the messaging app Telegram, criticized French authorities on Tuesday, accusing France of being “the only country in the world to criminally persecute all social networks that give people a certain freedom.”
“Make no mistake: this is not a free country,” he added. in an article on.
Durov what arrested and detained in France in August 2024 for alleged failures to moderate its messaging application, which, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office, had failed to curb criminal activities.
He was allowed to leave the country last March after the platform made some changes to the way it operated following his arrest.
