X office in France searched as Paris prosecutor summons Elon Musk for questioning

Paris, France — French authorities have asked Elon Musk to appear to answer questions as part of a probe into his social media platform X, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Monday, as authorities searched X’s office in the French capital.

“Summons 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,” the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

French cybercrime authorities were carrying out a search, meanwhile, at X’s offices in Paris, the prosecutor’s office said.

The summonses for Musk and Yaccarino and the search at the X office were related to an investigation launched in January 2025 over complaints about how X’s algorithm recommends content to users and gathers data, the prosecutor’s office said. Officials have previously raised concern that the way X works could amount to political interference.

The investigation is to ensure that X is in compliance with French laws, and the prosecutor added that it was broadened last year after reports that X was allowing users to share nonconsensual, AI-generated sexually explicit imagery, and holocaust denial content. 

X and Musk have dismissed the French investigation, and similar probes by European Union and British authorities, as baseless, politically motivated attacks on free speech.

Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year after two years at the helm of the company.

The investigation is being led by the cybercrime unit of the prosecutor’s office, in conjunction with French police and the joint European policing agency Europol.

A CBS News investigation found late last month that the Grok AI tool on Musk’s X platform still allowed users in the U.S., U.K. and EU to digitally undress people without their consent, despite public pledges from the company to stop the function.

The Grok chatbot, both via its standalone app and for premium X account holders using the platform, allowed people to use artificial intelligence to edit images of real people and show them in revealing clothing such as bikinis.

A request for comment on the findings of CBS News’ investigation was met with an apparent auto-reply from Musk’s company xAI, saying only: “Legacy media lies.” 

Scrutiny of the Grok feature has mounted rapidly in recent months, with the British government warning X could face a U.K.-wide ban if it fails to block the “bikini-fy” tool, and EU regulators announcing their own investigation into the Grok AI editing function on in late January.

CBS News found Grok was still enabling users to digitally undress people in photos weeks after X said, earlier in January, that it had, “implemented technological measures to prevent the [@]Grok account on X globally from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis. This restriction applies to all users, including paid subscribers.”