France Summons Elon Musk Over Allegations Of Child Abuse Images And Deepfakes On X

Last Updated:April 20, 2026, 11:26 IST

The X CEO was summoned in February earlier this year after a search took place at the French premises of X as part of an investigation.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has been summoned by French authorities to Paris on Monday as part of a probe into allegations of misconduct related to his his social media platform X (formerly Twitter), including the spread of child sexual abuse material and deepfake content.

Musk and his predecessor, Linda Yaccarino, have been summoned for “voluntary interviews," while other employees of the social media platform are scheduled to be heard as witnesses throughout this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said, as reported by news agency AFP.

It remains unclear whether Musk and Yaccarino will appear before the authorities.

“These voluntary interviews with the executives are intended to allow them to present their position regarding the facts and, where appropriate, the compliance measures they plan to implement," prosecutors said, as reported by the news agency.

“At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the ultimate objective of ensuring that platform X complies with French law, insofar as it operates within the national territory," it added.

The X CEO was summoned in February earlier this year after a search took place at the French premises of X as part of an investigation, opened in January 2025, into allegations that X’s algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.

The probe was later expanded to include an investigation into X’s AI chatbot Grok’s dissemination of Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes.

The social media giant had denied any wrongdoing at that time and had slammed the raids as “politicised" and an “abusive judicial act".

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 X employees had also been summoned to appear between April 20 and 24 “to be heard as witnesses".

But whether or not those invited for voluntary questioning appear would not be “an obstacle to the continuation of the investigation," the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.

The investigation in France is part of a wider global reaction against Grok. Concerns grew after people discovered they could easily create sexualized images of women and even children just by typing simple prompts like “put her in a bikini" or “remove her clothes."

A nonprofit group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, reported in late January that Grok created around three million such images in just 11 days. Most showed women, but about 23,000 appeared to involve children.

At the same time, authorities in the UK began looking into Elon Musk’s companies, X and xAI, to see if they broke data protection laws while generating these deepfake images. Around the same period, the European Union also started its own investigation into X over similar concerns about sexualized deepfakes involving women and minors.

(With inputs from agencies)

News world France Summons Elon Musk Over Allegations Of Child Abuse Images And Deepfakes On X

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