Audition Amidst International Scrutiny
Elon Musk has been summoned for a voluntary hearing by French judicial authorities as part of an ongoing investigation into his social media platform, X. The Paris prosecutor’s office is examining potential violations of French law by the platform, including whether a controversy over sexually explicit deepfakes generated by X’s AI, Grok, was artificially inflated to boost the company’s valuation.
Core Allegations: Market Manipulation and Illegal Content
The investigation, opened in January 2025, focuses on two primary areas. Prosecutors are looking into possible complicity in disseminating child sexual abuse material. More notably, they are probing whether the deepfake controversy was “generated deliberately to artificially enhance the value of X and X AI.” This alleged strategy is linked to a planned stock market listing in June 2026 for a new entity formed from a merger between SpaceX and X AI.
Following a raid on X’s offices in early February, Musk publicly insulted French magistrates, calling them “mental retards” in a post on the platform. X has denounced the judicial actions as an “abusive act” based on “political motivations” and has refuted any wrongdoing.
International Dimensions and Legal Standoff
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed it has shared elements of the case with U.S. authorities, including the Department of Justice and state prosecutors in California and New York, as well as with various European counterparts. According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs has reportedly sent a letter arguing that the French investigation violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections, though French prosecutors state they have no knowledge of this correspondence.
At this stage, X is not facing formal criminal charges in France. The voluntary hearings are intended to allow company leaders to present their position on the facts and any planned compliance measures. The prosecutor’s office has emphasized that Musk’s physical presence, while requested, is not indispensable for the investigation to proceed.
