French prosecutors have summoned Elon Musk to Paris as their X probe turns into a full criminal investigation into kiddie porn and the creation of sexualised deepfake images by his Grok chatbot.
The new summons came just weeks after Tesla chief executive Elon Musk failed to appear for a voluntary interview with French prosecutors. It escalates a transatlantic row over France’s long-running investigation into X.
The case highlights a widening split between the US and Europe over whether tech platforms should police online speech, and how far they should go.
The US Justice Department last month refused to cooperate with the French investigation. It called the case a “politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”
That followed a February raid on X’s Paris offices by French law enforcement and prosecutors looking for evidence.
The investigation began in 2025 with claims of a biased algorithm. It has since expanded to include alleged violations of secrecy of correspondence, dissemination of child pornography and the creation of sexualised deepfake images by the Grok chatbot.
Prosecutors said Thursday that the probe had become an official criminal investigation. They said Musk and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino were being invited to respond to preliminary charges against them.
If Musk or Yaccarino fails to appear, prosecutors said they can be hit with preliminary criminal charges in their absence.
In the French legal system, an investigating magistrate takes over once preliminary charges are filed. That investigation can run for months or years before a decision is made on whether to send the accused to trial or drop the case.
X did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but previously called the raid an “abusive act of law enforcement theatre.”
French prosecutors said Thursday that the aim of the investigation was to force platforms such as X to comply with French law when operating in France. So far, prosecutors have not sought to arrest or detain Musk or others linked to the X investigation.
The push for possible criminal charges against Musk is part of a more aggressive strategy from cybercrime investigators in the Paris prosecutor’s office. They have increasingly tried to hold tech company bosses criminally responsible for what happens on their apps.
Earlier this year, they issued arrest warrants for executives at an Australian video website under investigation.
In 2024, they were involved in the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov as part of an investigation into the chat and social media app’s responsibility for alleged crimes on its platform.
Durov was hit with preliminary charges and barred from leaving France for more than six months. Durov and Telegram have both denied wrongdoing.
Tensions between Europe and the US over tech regulation were already bubbling away because of different approaches to free expression. In Europe, some countries ban certain types of hate speech, including antisemitic posts, that would be legal in the US.
European Union regulators have expanded their powers with a bloc-wide law requiring large tech platforms to monitor their services for illegal content or face big fines.
The Trump administration and other US officials have accused the EU of trying to silence dissent. The US imposed visa restrictions on five people it described as “agents of the global censorship-industrial complex.”
European regulators have filed several cases against X. The EU fined the social media company about $140 million last year for alleged breaches of EU law linked to X’s blue checkmark system.
The UK and EU have both opened probes into X over sexualised images, including images of children, created by Grok.
Earlier Wednesday, EU countries and the bloc’s parliament agreed a provisional deal to ban so-called nudifier tools. These tools can be used to create explicit images of a person without consent.
The rule would ban apps that fail to block the capability in artificial-intelligence image-generation software. The move was driven largely by the row over Grok.
