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Elon Musk’s X offices in Paris were raided by French and European investigators on Tuesday, following a public outcry over how its Grok chatbot spread sexualised images of women and children.
French prosecutors also summoned Musk and Linda Yaccarino, X’s former chief executive, for “voluntary interviews” in Paris in April, as part of their wide-ranging investigation into the social media platform.
The raids came as the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced it was launching a new investigation into X and its sister company xAI, saying it had “serious concerns” about Grok’s use of personal data and “its potential to produce harmful sexualised image and video content”.
Musk has come under scrutiny from regulators around the world over the past month after people began using Grok to generate deepfakes of people without consent.
Investigators from the Paris public prosecutor’s office, the national cyber crimes unit and Europol were involved in the search on Tuesday. The French probe was launched last year into X’s algorithms, but has since widened to examine the spread of AI-generated sexual abuse material as well as posts denying crimes against humanity.
The prosecutor’s office said: “The conduct of this investigation is, at this stage, part of a constructive approach, with the objective of ultimately ensuring the compliance of X with French laws.”
The probe is preliminary and no charges have been made.
X said in a post the allegations were “baseless” and it “categorically denies any wrongdoing”.
It dubbed the raid an “abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives”.
It added: “Today’s staged raid reinforces our conviction that this investigation distorts French law, circumvents due process, and endangers free speech.”
The UK’s ICO on Tuesday said it was working with the country’s media regulator Ofcom, which is gathering evidence for its own investigation into X.
“We are progressing the investigation as a matter of urgency,” Ofcom said, adding such probes took “typically months” to complete.
Ofcom last month launched its investigation into X, the platform where the offending content was distributed, but it is not tackling xAI, because the UK’s Online Safety Act does not apply to all AI chatbots.
X and xAI are part of the same company, which is controlled by Musk. The group is set to become part of his rocket company SpaceX under a $1.25tn deal announced on Monday.
After facing pressure from governments around the world, X last month implemented what it called “technological measures” to prevent the AI tool from being used to manipulate photos of real people, and limited image creation and editing to paying subscribers.
Musk has said those who use Grok to generate illegal content “will suffer the same consequences” as those uploading illegal materials.
The EU also opened a formal investigation into xAI for Grok’s spread of sexualised images of women and children at the end of January under the bloc’s Digital Services Act. Malaysia and Indonesia temporarily banned the chatbot altogether but have subsequently lifted those restrictions, as the governments continue to monitor the service.
The latest confrontation between European regulators and an American tech group is likely to inflame tensions with the US administration and free speech advocates. President Donald Trump has claimed the EU unfairly targets US tech companies.
The raid on X’s Paris office is not the first time French justice has attempted to hold social media platform owners responsible for content spread on their networks.
French authorities arrested Pavel Durov, the Russian-born founder of Telegram, when he landed at a Paris airport on a private jet in August 2024.
Durov, who has French and United Arab Emirates citizenship, was placed under formal investigation in Paris in 2024 over the app’s alleged failure to address criminality, including child abuse content. Durov has denied any wrongdoing.
Durov wrote on X on Tuesday: “France is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom (Telegram, X, TikTok . . . ). Don’t be mistaken: this is not a free country.”
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy in San Francisco
