French authorities have raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X as part of a criminal investigation into its Grok AI chatbot.
The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office have confirmed that police specialising in combating cyber-crime conducted the search in relation to an investigation into the content recommended by X’s algorithm.
The investigation, which is looking into a range of alleged offences, including spreading child pornography and deepfakes, is being aided by the EU's law enforcement agency Europol.
The prosecutor's office said that both Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino have been summoned to appear at hearings in April as part of its probe, while further X employees have also been summoned to be heard as witnesses.
X has described the investigation as an attack on free speech, and called the widening of the probe as “politically-motivated”.
The investigation was opened last January and was expanded in the summer following reports of sexually explicit deepfakes and antisemitic content circulating on the platform.
Grok has attracted a barrage of criticism from victims, politicians, and campaigners for using real images of women without their consent to create sexual content.
A recent study estimated that Grok could have produced up to three million sexualised images in just 11 days in January, including 23,000 of children.
Prosecutors are now also investigating whether X has broken the law across multiple other areas, with alleged complicity in possession or organised distribution of images of children of a pornographic nature, denial of crimes against humanity, and fraudulent data extraction by an organised group.
“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.
They also added that the prosecutors’ office would be leaving the platform and would communicate through other forms of social media.
In January, the European Commission announced a new probe into Grok’s parent company xAI under the EU's online platforms rulebook, and a similar probe has been launched by the UK regulator, Ofcom.
