Elon Musk did not appear for a voluntary interview with French prosecutors on Monday, who had summoned him as part of an investigation into alleged child sexual abuse images and other offences linked to his social media platform X and AI chatbot Grok.
The Paris prosecutor's office said it had “taken note of the absence of the first people summoned”, without naming Musk. Weeks earlier, the billionaire had called the French authorities involved “retards” in a post on X. The prosecutors stressed that the absence did not “obstruct the continuation of the investigation”.
The investigation, launched in January 2025, initially focused on allegations that X’s algorithm interfered in French politics, but was later expanded to include Holocaust denial material and sexual deepfakes generated by Grok. French authorities searched X’s Paris offices in February, which the company described as a “politicised” and “abusive judicial act”.
Musk and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino were summoned as “de facto and de jure managers”. Yaccarino resigned in July last year. The probe also targets suspected complicity in possessing child sexual abuse material. X has denied wrongdoing, calling the investigation “politically motivated”.
The French probe follows a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate that Grok generated an estimated 3 million sexualised images in 11 days, including 23,000 depicting children. Separate investigations have been launched by Britain’s data regulator and the European Union over Grok’s generation of sexualised deepfakes.
