Elon Musk snubs Paris legal summons over alleged child abuse images on X | X
Elon Musk did not attend a voluntary meeting on Monday with lawyers in Paris who summoned the American tech billionaire over an investigation into social media platform X and AI chatbot Grok.
Prosecutors told AFP they “took into consideration the absence of the initial individuals summoned” without mentioning Musk’s name. The billionaire, as French officials called him, included “retards” in a French-language post on X weeks ago.
“The presence or absence of [of the people summoned] Prosecutors issued the subpoena in February as part of an investigation launched in January 2025 into allegations that X’s algorithm was used to interfere in French politics. The scope was later expanded by X’s AI chatbot Grok to include the dissemination of Holocaust denial material and sexual deepfakes.
French prosecutors also searched X’s Paris offices in February; The social media company, which denied any wrongdoing in this search, criticized it as a “politicized” and “malicious judicial act”.
At the time, Paris prosecutors also summoned Musk and the company’s then-CEO Linda Yaccarino to volunteer interviews as “the de facto and de jure directors of the X platform at the time of the events”; It was a move Musk called a “political attack.” Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year after two years at the helm of the company.
In February, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that the company’s employees were also subpoenaed between April 20 and April 24 to “hear as witnesses.” However, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Saturday that their voluntary interrogation would not “prevent the continuation of the investigation.” Officials did not offer any details about the location or time of Musk’s planned interview.
The investigation in France is focusing on several suspected crimes, including complicity in the possession of child sexual abuse material and denial of crimes against humanity. In July, the social media company called the investigation “politically motivated.”
His complaints were echoed Monday by Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov, who is also the subject of a French investigation into illegal activities on his platform.
“[Emmanuel] Macron’s France is losing legitimacy as it weaponizes criminal investigations to suppress freedom of expression and privacy,” read a post about X by Russian-born Durov, who also holds French nationality.
The French investigation comes as part of a wider international backlash against Grok after it was revealed that users were able to sexualise images of women and children using simple text commands such as “put her in a bikini” or “take off her clothes”.
An estimated 3 million sexualized images (mostly of women, with 23,000 appearing to depict children) were produced in 11 days, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit watchdog, said in late January.
In a separate investigation, Britain’s data regulator launched investigations into Musk’s
In January, the EU also hit X with an investigation into Grok’s sexualized deepfake images of women and minors.
