Musk fails to appear for questioning at Paris prosecutor's office — newspaper

Lead

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of social media platform X, did not appear for a voluntary interview with French prosecutors on Monday as part of an ongoing investigation into the platform and its AI chatbot Grok.

French prosecutors confirmed they had "noted the absence of those summoned," without naming Musk directly, according to reports from multiple outlets including AFP. The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement that the presence or absence of those summoned "does not hinder the continuation of the investigation."

Coverage Comparison

The story was covered by several international outlets, including Deutsche Welle (DW), France 24, RFI, and TASS, each with slightly different angles. All sources agree that Musk failed to appear for questioning, but they differ on the framing: DW and France 24 emphasize the voluntary nature of the interview, while RFI and TASS describe it as a hearing or questioning that Musk "failed to appear" at or "chose not to show up" for. TASS, citing the French newspaper Le Canard enchaîné, reported that by noon, neither Musk nor former X CEO Linda Yaccarino had appeared.

Key Claims

• Musk was summoned for a voluntary interview in Paris as part of a French probe into X, according to prosecutors and multiple reports.
• The investigation, launched in January 2025, initially examined allegations that X's algorithm was used to interfere in French politics, and was later expanded to include Grok's dissemination of Holocaust denial and sexually explicit deepfakes.
• French prosecutors suspect Musk encouraged deepfakes to inflate the value of X, a claim reported by RFI but not echoed by other sources.
• Musk has accused prosecutors of launching a "politically motivated criminal investigation" and has refused to cooperate, according to multiple reports.
• Grok, X's AI chatbot, generated an estimated three million sexualized images in 11 days, according to the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), as reported by DW.
• The European Union has opened an investigation into X over Grok's generation of sexualized deepfakes involving women and children, as reported by DW and France 24.
• The UK's data protection authority has launched a separate probe into X and xAI over "serious concerns" regarding compliance with personal data laws, according to DW.
• Former X CEO Linda Yaccarino was also summoned for questioning, as reported by TASS and others.
• The X offices in France were searched earlier in the investigation in cooperation with Europol and the French gendarmerie cybercrime unit, as stated by the prosecutor's office, according to TASS.

Perspectives

Musk and X have denied any wrongdoing, calling the investigation "politically motivated" and the raids "politicised" and an "abusive judicial act." Prosecutors, meanwhile, have described the interviews as a "constructive approach" to ensure X complies with French law. The investigation is part of a broader international backlash against Grok's content generation capabilities, which have drawn scrutiny from regulators in the EU and the UK. In a related case, Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France in 2024 for complicity in organized crime on the messaging app, a precedent that some, including Durov, have cited as evidence of the weaponization of criminal investigations. The French prosecutor's office has emphasized that the voluntary nature of the interviews means their absence does not impede the investigation.