The French offices of Elon Musk’s X have been raided by prosecutors as part of an investigation into the social media platform.
The Paris prosecutor’s cyber-crime unit raided the offices on Tuesday (February 3) as part of their investigation into allegations including unlawful data extraction and complicity in the possession of child pornography.
Both Musk and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino have also been summoned by the prosecutor’s office to appear at hearings in April.
French authorities opened an investigation into X in January 2025 after prosecutors looked into content recommended by X’s algorithm. In July, the investigation was widened to include the platform’s controversial AI assistant, Grok.
Prosecutors have said that, following the raid, they are now looking into whether X broke the law across multiple areas, the BBC reports.
Whilst X has yet to respond to the office raid, it has previously labelled the French case as “politically-motivated” and has denied allegations it had manipulated its algorithm.
Separately, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has announced a probe into Grok over its “potential to produce harmful sexualised image and video content.”
Last month, Musk and X came under fire after it emerged Grok was being used by some users to produce sexualised deepfakes of women without their consent. In some cases, sexualised images of children are alleged to have been created by Grok after requests from users.
Ofcom announced in January that it was investigating the matter and the British government urged the regulator to use all its powers. This includes potentially implementing a ban on X in the UK.
The ICO announced its own probe on Tuesday, in conjunction with Ofcom’s. The office is looking into the processing of personal data in relation to the Grok.
“The reports about Grok raise deeply troubling questions about how people’s personal data has been used to generate intimate or sexualised images without their knowledge or consent, and whether the necessary safeguards were put in place to prevent this,” said William Malcolm, the ICO’s executive director for regulatory risk & innovation.
The European Commission announced last month that it was investigating parent company xAI over images generated on the social media platform formally known as Twitter.