Paris (France) (AFP) – France summoned billionaire Elon Musk to a “voluntary interview” as cybercrime authorities on Tuesday searched the French offices of his social media network X, the Paris public prosecutor’s office said. The operation, which involves EU police agency Europol, is part of an investigation opened in January 2025 into whether X’s algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.
“A search is being conducted today at the French premises of the X platform,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement. “Summons for voluntary interviews on April 20, 2026, in Paris have been sent to Mr. Elon Musk and Ms. Linda Yaccarino, in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events,” it added. Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year, after two years at the helm of the company.
Paris cybercrime prosecutors called for the police probe in July 2025 to investigate suspected crimes — including manipulating and extracting data from automated systems “as part of a criminal gang” — after receiving two complaints in January 2025. One of those came from Eric Bothorel, an MP from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, who complained of “reduced diversity of voices and options” and of “personal interventions” by Musk in the platform’s management since he took it over in 2022.
The investigation was then broadened after additional reports criticised the AI chatbot Grok’s role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes on X, the prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.
– ‘Politically motivated’ –
Laurent Buanec, France director of X, pushed back against the investigation in January 2025, saying X had “strict, clear and public rules,” which protected the platform from hate speech and disinformation. The US also issued a harsh condemnation in July, saying it would defend the free speech of Americans against “acts of foreign censorship.”
The social media platform, which has denied the allegations, also in July called the investigation “politically motivated.” In late January, the European Union hit X with an investigation over Grok’s generation of sexualised deepfake images of women and minors. The EU move comes despite repeated US threats of retaliation against enforcement of tech rules that President Donald Trump’s administration says curb free speech and unfairly target US firms.
© 2024 AFP
