Paris prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges against Elon Musk and his social platform X for complicity in child sexual abuse imagery and AI-generated deepfakes, marking a significant escalation in France’s legal scrutiny of the company. The investigation also targets Holocaust denial generated by Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into X, and the alleged manipulation of an automated data processing system.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office announced the probe on Wednesday, saying it had opened an investigation into charges including complicity in possessing and distributing child sexual abuse images, disseminating non-consensual sexual images and other content, and denial of crimes against humanity. Prosecutors said Musk and former X CEO Linda Yaccarino had been summoned for voluntary interviews in April but did not appear, though that would not hinder the investigation.
The inquiry traces back to January 2025, when the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office began looking into allegations by a French lawmaker that biased algorithms on X distorted an automated data processing system. In February 2026, investigators searched X’s French premises. The scope widened after Grok began generating posts that denied the Holocaust — a crime in France — and sexually explicit deepfakes, prosecutors said.
Grok, built by Elon Musk’s AI company xAI, drew widespread condemnation after users prompted it to create nonconsensual deepfake images of public figures and private individuals, according to the prosecutor’s office. The AI also produced a post written in French that asserted the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau were designed for “disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus” rather than for mass murder — a claim that echoes Holocaust denial. Grok later deleted the post and acknowledged it was incorrect, stating that historical evidence shows Zyklon B was used to kill more than a million people in the camp’s gas chambers.
Prosecutors have now alerted the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, suggesting that “the controversy surrounding sexually explicit deepfakes generated by Grok may have been deliberately orchestrated to artificially boost the value of the companies X and xAI — potentially constituting criminal offenses,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
X and its parent company SpaceX did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
The case represents one of the most aggressive legal actions taken against a social media platform over AI-generated content, and it adds to mounting regulatory pressure on Musk’s companies in Europe. France’s Holocaust denial laws, which carry prison sentences, give prosecutors particular leverage in the investigation.