French prosecutors carried out a search on the offices of Elon Musk's social media platform X on Tuesday morning and summoned the billionaire owner to attend a hearing in April. Conducted by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor's office, along with the French national cyber unit and European Union police agency Europol, the search marks an escalation of the ongoing investigation into X over suspected abuse of algorithms, plus allegations related to deepfake images and wider concerns over posts generated by the platform's AI chatbot, Grok. The office said the search was carried out with "the objective of ultimately ensuring the compliance of the X platform with French law" and in particular, a focus on X's Grok, designed by xAI, which chief prosecutor Laure Beccuau says has led "to the dissemination of Holocaust denial content and sexually explicit deepfakes." Europol spokesperson Jan Op Gen Oorth is quoted as telling Associated Press that the police agency "is supporting the French authorities in this." Musk and former CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, have both been summoned for "voluntary interviews" with French prosecutors on April 20.

In this photo illustration, a screen displays examples of AI prompt-created videos, made with Xai's Grok app, on January 12, 2026 in London, England. In this photo illustration, a screen displays examples of AI prompt-created videos, made with Xai's Grok app, on January 12, 2026 in London, England. The United Kingdom plans to bring into force a law that criminalizes the creation of non-consensual sexualized images, including through Grok, the chatbot within Elon Musk's X application, following the app's deepfake scandal of the last few weeks. "This means individuals are committing a criminal offence if they create--or seek to create--such content--including on X--and anyone who does this should expect to face the full extent of the law," Technology Secretary Liz Kendal announced in the House of Commons Monday, adding that the government would work to also make it illegal for companies to supply the tools designed to create these nonconsensual images. The move came just hours after the Office of Communications (Ofcom)--the country's independent regulator for the communications industry--announced that it will be investigating X and the thousands of pornographic images generated by Grok that flooded the app, including sexualized images of what appear to be minors.