French prosecutors say they have alerted US authorities to a suspicion that tech billionaire Elon Musk encouraged sexualised deepfakes on social media platform X to "artificially" increase his company's value.
The Grok chatbot – developed by xAI and hosted on Musk's social media platform X – allows users to make nonconsensual sexualised deepfakes, including of women and children. The practice has triggered investigations in Europe and the UK.
"The controversy sparked by sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok may have been deliberately generated in order to artificially boost the value of companies X and X AI", the Paris prosecutor's office said Saturday.
This may have been done, it said, with a view to "the planned June 2026 stock market listing of the new entity created by the merger" between Space X and X AI.
It said it had reached out on Tuesday to the US Department of Justice, as well as French lawyers at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a financial market regulation body, to share its concerns.
On Monday this week three young women filed a lawsuit against xAI in a federal California court. They claim the company facilitated child pornography by allowing the creation of sexually explicit images of them.
In February, the data protection watchdog in Ireland – where X's European HQ is based – launched a probe into Grok's generation of sexualised deepfake images.
Ireland watchdog opens probe into sexual AI imagery from Grok chatbot
Mounting investigations
Since last year, the French authorities have been investigating X over allegations that its algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.
It now also includes a probe into the Grok AI tool's dissemination of Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes.
French authorities last month summoned Musk to a "voluntary interview" and searched the local offices of his social media network, in what Musk called a "political attack".
US officials have strongly condemned the enquiry.
In a separate case, a US federal judge on Friday found Musk misled Twitter shareholders, driving down the company's share price as he was poised to buy it in a $44 billion deal in 2022.
US jury finds Elon Musk misled Twitter shareholders
Musk was accused of falsely claiming on social media that Twitter (which he rebranded X) underreported how many fake and spam accounts, known as bots, were on its platform.
Damages have yet to be calculated but Francis Bottini, a lawyer for the shareholders, estimated they could total about $2.5 billion.
(with newswires)
