The raid pertains to an investigation launched into the social media site in January 2025.
French cybercrime prosecutors have raided X’s offices in the country, and summoned the social media platform’s owner Elon Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino for questioning.
“A search is being carried out at X’s French offices by the Paris prosecutor’s office cybercrime unit”, a translated post from the Paris prosecutor’s office on X read. The post is no longer viewable after the office also closed its X account today.
The raid pertains to an investigation launched into the social media site in January 2025 when authorities began looking into X’s content algorithm. The probe was later expanded to include Grok after reports highlighted the chatbot for its alleged role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes.
At the time, X’s Global Government Affairs account published a lengthy statement calling the investigation “politically motivated” and “criminal”.
X said at the time that it categorically denied the allegations, adding that the investigation threatened platform users’ rights to privacy and free speech. Both X and Grok are owned by xAI, which has just merged with Musk’s space venture SpaceX in a $1.25trn deal.
Today’s (3 February) search was undertaken alongside the French police’s national cyber unit and Europol.
In a statement, prosecutors added that Musk and Yaccarino have been called in for voluntary questioning on 20 April “in their capacity as de facto and de jure managers of the X platform at the time of the events”. Yaccarino quit as X’s CEO in July 2025 after serving in the role for two years.
France’s investigation into X is looking at the social platform’s alleged complicity around spreading child sexual abuse material and sexually explicit deepfakes.
The EU launched its own Digital Services Act probe into X late last month to assess whether the social media site properly assessed and mitigated risks stemming from its in-platform AI chatbot Grok.
Alongside this, the EU is continuing with a separate years-long investigation into X to assess if the platform mitigated risks stemming from its recommender systems, including the impact of the recently announced switch to a Grok-based recommender system.
Meanwhile, UK media regulator Ofcom has also launched an investigation into X over concerns that Grok may have produced child sexual abuse material.
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