Police raid X offices in Paris amid criminal probe
A criminal investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X escalated on Tuesday after French police raided the company’s offices in Paris. Authorities are investigating alleged offenses, including the distribution of child sexual abuse images, the creation and spread of sexually explicit deepfakes, and the dissemination of Holocaust denial content.
French authorities have been investigating X for more than a year, focusing on the platform’s algorithm and data-handling practices. The probe expanded after reports surfaced that X’s AI chatbot, Grok, generated sexually explicit deepfake images and content denying crimes against humanity.
In a statement, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office says the investigation covers multiple potential criminal offenses, including:
- Complicity in possession of images of minors with a pedopornographic nature.
- Complicity in the dissemination, offering, or provision in organized groups of images of minors with a pedopornographic nature.
- Violation of personal representation (sexually explicit deepfakes).
- Denial of crimes against humanity (negationism).
- Fraudulent extraction of data from an automated data processing system in organized groups.
- Falsification of the functioning of an automated data processing system in organized groups.
- Administration of an illicit online platform in organized groups.
The raid reflects a broader push across Europe to enforce laws governing online platforms and unlawful digital content.
Tuesday’s raid
In a post on X, the Paris Prosecutor’s Office said the raid was conducted with France’s National Cyber Unit and the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation.
“At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the ultimate goal of ensuring the platform X’s compliance with French laws, as it operates within the national territory,” the office said.
The office also issued summonses to current and former X employees, including Musk. They request their participation in voluntary interviews scheduled for April.
“The voluntary interviews with the executives aim to allow them to present their position on the facts and, if applicable, the compliance measures they plan to implement,” the statement said.
Related investigations
The Paris raid comes just days after the European Union launched a separate investigation into Grok, focusing on its now-disabled “spicy mode,” which regulators say generated AI photos of minors “in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt.”
The controversy initially prompted Musk to limit access to the tool before X later blocked all users from generating images of people in revealing clothing.
The EU is investigating Musk’s response to determine whether the tech platform “properly assessed and mitigated risks associated with the deployment of Grok’s functionalities into X in the EU.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
