\u201cThe Paris Public Prosecutor\u2019s office widely publicised the raid \u2013 making clear that today\u2019s action was an abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives rather than advance legitimate law enforcement goals,\u201d X\u2019s Global Government Affairs team posted on the platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe allegations underlying today\u2019s raid are baseless and X categorically denies any wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Paris prosecutor\u2019s office said that \u201csummons 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\u201d being investigated.<\/p>\n
Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year after two years at the helm of the company.<\/p>\n
The French probe focuses on alleged offences including complicity in possessing child sexual abuse material and denial of crimes against humanity.<\/p>\n
X employees have also been summoned to appear between April 20 and 24 \u201cto be heard as witnesses\u201d, said Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau, whose office announced in a final message on X it would be leaving the platform.<\/p>\n
Telegram founder Pavel Durov \u2013 who is under investigation in France over illegal content on his messaging app \u2013 also blasted the raid.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrance is the only country in the world that is criminally persecuting all social networks that give people some degree of freedom,\u201d the Russian-born entrepreneur wrote on X, naming Telegram, TikTok, and X.<\/p>\n
Durov, who holds French and Russian passports, has been accused of complicity in running an online platform that allowed illicit transactions, images of child sex abuse and other illegal content. He denies the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u2018Serious concerns\u2019<\/p>\n
There has been a broader international backlash against Grok after it emerged that users could sexualise images of women and children using simple text prompts such as \u201cput her in a bikini\u201d or \u201cremove her clothes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Britain\u2019s data regulator has launched investigations into Musk\u2019s X and xAI to see whether the companies complied with personal data laws in Grok\u2019s generation of sexualised deepfakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reported creation and circulation of such content raises serious concerns under UK data protection law and presents a risk of significant potential harm to the public,\u201d the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office said in a statement.<\/p>\n
In January, the European Union also hit X with an investigation over Grok\u2019s generation of sexualised deepfake images of women and minors.<\/p>\n
\u2018Politically motivated\u2019<\/p>\n
Paris cybercrime prosecutors called for the police probe in July 2025 to investigate suspected crimes \u2013 including manipulating and extracting data from automated systems \u201cas part of a criminal gang\u201d \u2013 after receiving two complaints in January 2025.<\/p>\n
One complaint was made by Eric Bothorel, a lawmaker from President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s centrist party, who alleged \u201creduced diversity of voices and options\u201d and \u201cpersonal interventions\u201d by Musk in the platform\u2019s management since he took it over in 2022.<\/p>\n
Musk has faced criticism for backing right-wing parties in Europe, including vocal backing for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.<\/p>\n
On top of X\u2019s condemnation of the investigation and raid, the US administration said in July it would defend the free speech of Americans against \u201cacts of foreign censorship\u201d.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Paris Public Prosecutor\u2019s office widely publicised the raid \u2013 making clear that today\u2019s action was an abusive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,1554,1863,73196,43361,17448,1221,11775,13313,305,42,4508,78,62953,296,12898,1073,17449,17444,43,33027,6943,5202,18154,142194,28758,26481,37058,134454,17703,41401,1072,151772,151771,40,38,41,39,6923],"class_list":["post-266348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-alleged","tag-back","tag-deepfake","tag-deepfakes","tag-elon","tag-france","tag-french","tag-giant","tag-have","tag-headlines","tag-hits","tag-in","tag-interference","tag-into","tag-investigation","tag-media","tag-musk","tag-musks","tag-news","tag-offices","tag-paris","tag-part","tag-political","tag-politicised","tag-probe","tag-prosecutors","tag-raids","tag-searched","tag-sexual","tag-slammed","tag-social","tag-summoned","tag-summons","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-what"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}