Tech billionaire Elon Musk failed to appear on Monday for a voluntary interview with Paris prosecutors investigating his social media platform X (Twitter) and its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok.
French prosecutors confirmed that the individuals summoned for questioning did not attend but stressed that their absence would not hinder the investigation.
Prosecutors told AFP they had “taken note of the absence of the first people summoned,” without mentioning Musk directly.
“The presence or absence (of the people summoned) is not an obstacle to continuing the investigation,” the prosecutors added.
The summons had been issued in February as part of a probe launched in January 2025 into allegations that the algorithm of X was used to interfere in French politics.
The investigation was later expanded to examine claims that Grok disseminated harmful content, including Holocaust denial and sexual deepfake images.
Earlier in February, French authorities conducted searches at the Paris offices of X, a move the company strongly criticised as politically motivated.
The platform denied any wrongdoing and described the searches as “politicised raids” and an “abusive judicial act”.
At the time, Paris prosecutors had summoned Musk and former X chief executive Linda Yaccarino for voluntary questioning, identifying them as the de facto and de jure managers of the platform during the period under investigation.
Musk dismissed the summons as a “political attack,” while Yaccarino stepped down from her role in July last year after two years leading the company.
Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau had also said several company employees were summoned to appear between April 20 and 24 to provide witness testimony.
Officials have not disclosed the time or location of Musk’s scheduled interview, but they reiterated that the probe will proceed regardless of whether the invited participants cooperate.
The French investigation centres on suspected criminal offences, including complicity in possessing child sexual abuse material and denial of crimes against humanity.
The probe has drawn criticism from X and some tech industry figures.
The platform reiterated in July that the investigation was politically motivated.
Support for Musk’s criticism came from Pavel Durov, the co-founder of Telegram, who is also facing a separate French investigation into alleged illegal activity on his messaging platform.
In a post on X, Durov said France was undermining its legitimacy by using criminal investigations to suppress free speech and privacy.
“President Emmanuel Macron’s France is losing legitimacy as it weaponises criminal investigations to suppress free speech and privacy,” Durov wrote.
The French investigation comes amid a broader international backlash against Grok following reports that users could generate sexualised images of women and children using simple text prompts.
According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, the chatbot generated an estimated three million sexualised images within 11 days, most depicting women but including about 23,000 images that appeared to portray minors.
In a separate development, Britain’s data regulator opened an investigation in February into X and Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI over concerns about compliance with personal data protection laws related to Grok.
Earlier in January, the European Union also launched its own probe into the chatbot’s ability to generate sexualised deepfake images involving women and minors.
Authorities across Europe are increasingly scrutinising artificial intelligence tools integrated into major social media platforms as concerns grow over misinformation, privacy violations, and harmful content.
