French police, alongside Europol, searched the office of Elon Musk's social media platform X in the French capital on Tuesday, the Paris prosecutor's office said.

The platform, formerly known as Twitter, is being investigated for a litany of alleged offenses, including boosting engagement for far-right extremist content and for allowing the company's AI chatbot to create sexualized deepfake images of women and children.

Musk summoned to talk to French prosecutors

Prosecutors have also filed requests for "voluntary interviews" of Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino on April 20.

Paris prosecutors' office posted on the X platform itself to confirm the ongoing raids before saying it was leaving and telling its followers to join it on other platforms.

"At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory," Paris public prosecutor Laure Beccuau said.

A spokesperson for the EU's police agency Europol told the Associated Press it was "supporting the French authorities in this," without elaborating.

What potential crimes by X are being investigated?

The Paris prosecutors' office has listed the allegations that it is looking into as part of its investigation into Musk's social media platform:

• Complicity in the possession of images of minors of a pornographic nature
• Complicity in the organised distribution, offering, or making available of images of ‍minors of a pornographic nature
• Defamation of a person's image (deepfakes of ​sexual nature)
• Denial of crimes against humanity (Holocaust denial)
• Fraudulent extraction of data from an ⁠automated data processing system ​by an organized group
• Falsification of the operation ‌of ‌an automated data processing system by an organized group
• Operating of an illegal online platform by an organized group

The first three possible crimes refer to the Grok chatbot created by xAI and which functions on the X platform. A "spicy mode" that was released last year resulted in tens of thousands of images being produced by the bot that included pictures of real people in sexualized poses or revealing clothing.

Grok also produced images depicting children in a similar way.

Following an international outcry, xAI said it would only allow paying members to use this function. Several countries, as well as the EU, launched investigations. Indonesia and Malaysia blocked Grok over the incident.

Musk's chatbot under investigation for Holocaust denial

French authorities launched their investigation in January 2025 over fraudulent data extraction. It then expanded into cover allegations of Holocaust denial — a crime in France — by Grok.

The chatbot wrote in a widely shared post that the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were used for "disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus," a common form of Holocaust denial.

While Grok later acknowledged that it had been wrong, the Musk chatbot has a history of making antisemitic comments, including praising Adolf Hitler in posts that were later taken down.

Eric Bothorel, the lawmaker whose complaint triggered the initial investigation, celebrated the raid on X.

"Glad to see that my complaint from January 2025 is ‌yielding results! In Europe, and particularly in France, the Rule of Law means that no one is above the law," Bothorel said.

Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher