French police raids X's Paris offices

The raid is part of an investigation into child abuse images and deepfakes.
 By 
Stan Schroeder
 on 
X logo
The raid is part of an investigation into deepfakes and child abuse images. Credit: picture alliance/getty images

French prosecutors have raided the Paris officers of Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) as part of a preliminary investigation into child abuse images and deepfakes proliferating on the platform.

The investigation was opened in January 2025, with charges including "complicity" in "in possessing and spreading pornographic images of minors, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data processing system as part of an organized group," the AP reported Tuesday.

The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed the news via its own X account on Tuesday.


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"A search is carried out at X's French premises by the cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor's office, with @CyberGEND and @Europol as part of the investigation opened in January 2025."

Paris prosecutor's office also said it would be leaving X, inviting followers to find it on LinkedIn an Instagram.

Elon Musk and Linda Yaccarino, which served as X CEO from May 2023 to July 2025, are summoned for "voluntary interviews," on April 20, the Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement.

“At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory,” said the statement.

In a message posted in July 2025, X called the investigation "politically motivated," and said it would not cooperate.

Grok, xAI's AI assistant which has a prominent place on X, has recently come under scrutiny as it was being used to produce millions of sexualized images of adults and children. Grok later took measures to address these concerns, primarily via limiting image generation to paid subscribers, though several regulators and governments called the move insufficient.

Topics Elon Musk

Stan Schroeder
Stan Schroeder
Senior Editor

Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.

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