(Adnkronos) – Elon Musk has been summoned to Paris, where investigators are looking into alleged irregularities related to the social platform X, including the dissemination of child pornography and deepfake content. The world’s richest man and Linda Yaccarino, former CEO of X, have been summoned for “voluntary questioning,” while other platform employees will be heard as witnesses later this week, the Paris prosecutor’s office announced. It is not yet clear whether Musk and Yaccarino will travel to Paris. French authorities launched an investigation following reports from a parliamentarian that distorted algorithms on the X platform likely altered the functioning of an automated data processing system. The investigation later expanded after the platform’s artificial intelligence system, Grok, generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust, a crime in France, and spread sexually explicit deepfakes.
The investigation concerns alleged “complicity” in the possession and dissemination of child pornographic images, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity, and manipulation of an automated data processing system within a criminal organization, among other charges. Grok, developed by xAI and available via X, sparked global outrage this year after disseminating a flood of sexualized and non-consensual deepfake images in response to X user requests. Grok also wrote in a widely shared French post that the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than mass extermination: language long associated with Holocaust denial. In subsequent posts on X, the chatbot backtracked and admitted its previous response was incorrect, stating it had deleted it, and referenced historical evidence showing how Zyklon B was used to kill over a million people in the Auschwitz gas chambers.
