The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday that French offices of Elon Musk’s social media platform X are being searched as part of a recently launched investigation.
“The prosecutor’s cybercrime unit is conducting the searches with the support of Europol and the French police’s own cybercrime department,” the office said in a post on X.
The action is linked to an inquiry that began in January 2025, the prosecutor added.
Musk and former X chief executive officer Linda Yaccarino have been summoned to appear at hearings on 20 April as part of the investigation, the office said.
The probe was initiated after liberal lawmaker Eric Bothorel of the Renaissance party raised concerns over algorithmic bias on X and alleged interference in its management following Musk’s acquisition of the platform in 2022, according to French newspaper Le Monde.
A separate complaint came from a civil service cybersecurity director, who claimed changes to X’s algorithm had amplified “nasty political content,” French media reported.
The prosecutor’s office previously stated that both complaints alleged the suspected use of X’s algorithm for “the purposes of foreign interference.”
“The investigation was expanded following other reports denouncing the operation of Grok on the X platform, which led to the dissemination of Holocaust denial content and sexual deepfakes,” it said in a statement on Tuesday.
In November, Paris prosecutors said they would investigate the artificial intelligence chatbot Grok—developed by Musk’s company xAI and integrated into X—after it produced French-language posts questioning the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.
More recently, Grok has drawn global criticism for enabling users to create nonconsensual sexually explicit material involving women and children.
The prosecutor’s office also noted on Tuesday that it was leaving X and advised users to “find us on LinkedIn and Instagram.”
