French office of Elon Musk's X raided by Paris prosecutor's cybercrime unit
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images
- The French offices of Elon Musk's X are being searched by local police.
- The Paris Prosecutor's Office said it was investigating several offenses and has summoned Musk.
- One area of investigation is the production of "sexual deepfakes" by Grok on X.
The French offices of Elon Musk's X have been raided by local police, according to the Paris Prosecutor's Office.
The search is being carried out by a cybercrime unit in relation to an investigation opened in January 2025, the prosecutor's office said in an X post on Tuesday.
A press release shared with Business Insider said that the office was investigating a number of criminal offences, including aiding and abetting the possession and distribution of child sexual abuse material, hosting sexually explicit deepfake content, and denial of crimes against humanity.
It said that the initial investigation was expanded following additional reports of Grok disseminating sexually-explicit deepfakes and denial of crimes against humanity on the platform.
Elon Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino have both been sent summons for hearings in April, the prosecutor's office said, along with other X employees.
The prosecutor's office said the search was being assisted by Europol, the European Union's central crime agency, and the French Gendarmerie nationale, a branch of the country's armed forces.
X — which was acquired by xAI in March 2025, before itself being folded into Musk's rocket company SpaceX this week — called the raid an "abusive act of law enforcement theater" designed to achieve "illegitimate political objectives."
The company said via a Tuesday post on X's global government affairs account that the underlying allegations were "baseless." It also accused the Paris Prosecutor's Office of "attempting to exert pressure on X's senior management in the United States."
Musk and Yaccarino also responded to the search on X, with the billionaire describing it as a "political attack" and Yaccarino accusing prosecutors of distorting French law in order to restrict free speech.
The raid is the latest setback facing X in Europe. The platform has faced huge backlash in recent months from politicians and regulators over the spread of sexual images of real people generated by xAI's chatbot Grok on the platform.
Last month, the European Union said it had opened an investigation into the spread of illegal images, including possible child sexual abuse material, generated by Grok on X. The UK's media regulator announced a similar investigation earlier in January.
X said last month that it had implemented technological measures to stop Grok from editing images of real people into revealing clothing.
In July last year, xAI apologized after Grok made antisemitic comments on X and praised Adolf Hitler.
The EU also hit X with a $140 million fine in December 2025 over the platform's infamous blue checkmark system, with the bloc said exposed users to scams.
The Paris Prosecutor's Office also said it would leave X and instead communicate on LinkedIn and Instagram.
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