French prosecutors on Feb. 3 searched the Paris offices of X as part of an investigation into alleged political interference and sexual deepfakes and summoned Elon Musk in what the social media giant slammed as "politicized" raids.
"This is a political attack," the billionaire wrote on social media, adding in a separate X post that authorities in France should instead focus on targeting sex criminals.
The search came as both Britain and the European Union have opened investigations into the creation of sexualized deepfakes by Musk's AI chatbot Grok.
A proposal by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to become the latest country to ban social media for under 16s enraged Musk, who called Sanchez "a tyrant and traitor" to Spain's people.
French authorities conducted a search at X's French premises as part of an investigation over allegations that X's algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.
It now also includes a probe into the Grok AI tool's dissemination of Holocaust denials and sexual deepfakes.
"The Paris Public Prosecutor's office widely publicized the raid—making clear that today's action was an abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives rather than advance legitimate law enforcement goals," X's Global Government Affairs team posted on the platform.
"The allegations underlying today's raid are baseless, and X categorically denies any wrongdoing."
The Paris prosecutor's office said that "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" being investigated.
Yaccarino resigned as CEO of X in July last year.
