FRENCH AUTHORITIES HAVE summoned Elon Musk to answer questions as part of their investigation into whether his social media platform X had been used to interfere in the country’s politics. 

The company’s offices in France were also raided this morning, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed. 

It said the search was conducted by the cybercrime unit with the assistance of EU police agency Europol.

“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 prosecutor’s office said.

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

Employees were also summoned as witnesses. 

“The conduct of this investigation is currently part of a constructive approach, with the objective of ultimately ensuring the compliance of the X platform with French law, insofar as it operates on national territory,” the office said. 

The investigation was opened following two complaints in January 2025 and then broadened after additional reports criticised the AI chatbot Grok for its role in disseminating Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes, the prosecutor’s office said.

One of the complaints came from Eric Bothorel, an MP from President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party, who complained of “reduced diversity of voices and options” and Musk’s “personal interventions” in the platform’s management since he took it over.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office at the time confirmed the investigation, denouncing the alleged biased algorithms which may have “distorted the operation of an automated data processing system”.

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Laurent Buanec, France director of X, pushed back against the investigation in January 2025, saying X had “strict, clear and public rules”, which protected the platform from hate speech and disinformation.

Last week, the European Commission initiated proceedings against X over the production of nonconsensual sexualised images of people, including children, by the company’s AI chatbot Grok.

EU tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said the probe would “determine whether X has met its legal obligations” under the bloc’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which is designed to police internet giants.

Research published by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate in January showed that Grok generated an estimated three million sexualised images of women and children in a matter of days. 

The scandal has led to calls for the platform to be investigated in multiple countries and a number of government ministers in Ireland have now deleted their accounts.