Paris Prosecutors Raid X Office, Summon Elon Musk For Questioning | EUROtoday

PARIS, Feb 3 (Reuters) – French police raided the workplaces of Elon Musk‘s social media community X on Tuesday and prosecutors ordered the tech billionaire to face questions in April in a widening investigation, amid rising scrutiny of the platform by authorities throughout Europe.

France’s raid and the summoning of Musk – which might additional improve tensions between Europe and the US over large tech and free speech – are linked to a year-long investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent knowledge extraction by X or its executives.

Britain’s privateness watchdog, in the meantime, additionally kicked off a proper investigation into Musk‘s synthetic intelligence chatbot Grok over the processing of private knowledge and its potential to provide dangerous sexualized photos and video content material.

In a press release the Paris prosecutor’s workplace mentioned it had broadened the scope of its investigation following complaints over the functioning of Grok.

The French probe will now additionally examine alleged complicity within the “detention and diffusion” of photos of a kid‑pornographic nature and the violation of an individual’s picture rights with sexually express deepfakes, amongst different potential crimes.

Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned to a listening to on April 20. Other X workers have been additionally summoned as witnesses.

There was no quick remark from X. In July, Musk denied the preliminary accusations and mentioned French prosecutors have been launching a “politically-motivated criminal investigation”.

“At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French laws, insofar as it operates on national territory,” the prosecutor’s workplace mentioned.

Such summons are obligatory, although they’re more durable to implement on individuals who don’t reside in France.

After such a listening to, authorities can resolve to both shelve or proceed the probe, and doubtlessly put suspects in custody.

Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, in the meantime, mentioned it was investigating the xAI chatbot, following experiences that Grok had been used to generate non-consensual sexual imagery of people, together with kids.

Britain’s media regulator Ofcom mentioned individually it was setting out the subsequent steps in its investigation into X launched final month, although supplied few particulars.

Ofcom is in search of to evaluate if the corporate has executed sufficient to mitigate the danger of sexual deepfakes spreading on its social media platform. But it has mentioned it was not investigating xAI, which operates the Grok chatbot, because it falls past the scope of present legislation.

Last week the European Union launched an investigation into X too, in search of to evaluate whether or not it disseminated unlawful content material, following public outcry over the spreading of manipulated sexualized photos by Grok.

The chatbot continues to generate sexualized photos of individuals even when customers explicitly warn that the themes don’t consent, Reuters has discovered.

xAI put some restrictions on Grok’s picture technology operate in response to the backlash final month.

The Paris prosecutor’s cybercrime unit is conducting the investigation in France, along with the French police’s personal cybercrime unit and Europol. The unit beforehand arrested Telegram founder Pavel Durov in 2024 over fees together with complicity in organized crime carried out on the messaging app, fees his lawyer has described as “absurd”.

The prosecutor’s workplace mentioned it launched the investigation after being contacted by a lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms in X have been prone to have distorted the operation of an automatic knowledge processing system.

“Glad to see that my complaint from January 2025 is yielding results!” that lawmaker, Eric Bothorel, mentioned on X. “In Europe, and particularly in France, the Rule of Law means that no one is above the law.”

The prosecutor’s workplace additionally mentioned it was leaving the X social media platform and would talk on LinkedIn and Instagram any more. LinkedIn belongs to Microsoft MSFT.O and Instagram to Meta META.O.

(Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Ingrid Melander and Dominique Patton; Editing by Alex Richardson and Richard Lough)