"French prosecutors summon Elon Musk over alleged child abuse images on X"

Owner of X summoned along with former CEO Linda Yaccarino over investigation by cybercrime unit

Elon Musk has been summoned to Paris, where investigators are looking into allegations of misconduct related to the social media platform X, including the spread of child sexual abuse material and deepfake content.

The world’s richest man and Linda Yaccarino – the former chief executive of X – were on Monday summoned for “voluntary interviews”, while other employees of the platform were scheduled to be heard as witnesses throughout this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office said.

It remains unclear whether Musk and Yaccarino will travel to Paris. A spokesperson for X did not respond to questions from Associated Press and Yaccarino’s current company, eMed, did not answer a request sent to the press email. [...]

French authorities opened their investigation after reports from a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X likely distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system. It expanded after the platform’s AI system, Grok , generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes.

The investigation is looking into alleged “complicity” in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organised group, among other charges.

Grok, which was built by xAI and is available through X, sparked global outrage this year after it pumped out a torrent of sexualised nonconsensual deepfake images in response to requests from X users. [...]