The French justice system has opened an information judiciaire targeting the American billionaire Elon Musk and the American social network X for possible abuses related to how the platform operates.
This comes after more than a year of preliminary investigation conducted by the Paris prosecutor’s office and entrusted to the specialized gendarmes of the national cyber unit, according to several sources close to the case on Thursday, confirming information from the daily Le Monde.
The opening of an information judiciaire means that an examining judge is now in charge of the investigations and may have expanded investigative powers, notably in terms of searches, hearings, or indictments.
According to the elements communicated by the Paris prosecutor’s office, the inquiry concerns, in particular, suspicions of complicity in the distribution and possession of images of a pedopornographic nature, illicit collection of personal data, violation of the secrecy of electronic communications, or the dissemination of sexual content generated by algorithmic processing without the consent of the persons involved.
The procedure also concerns facts related to the Grok artificial intelligence, developed by the company xAI associated with X, notably for content of antisemitic or negationist character that could fall under the offense of denying crimes against humanity.
Musk is not the only one implicated, since the former chief executive of X Linda Yaccarino is also targeted in the case as the platform’s head at the time of the examined facts.
The platform is also accused of having significantly reduced the reporting of pedopornographic content concerning France after a change of internal detection tool, which led investigators to examine the hypothesis of a deliberate maneuver, and other executives of the group had also been summoned by investigators.
The platform is also accused of having significantly reduced the reporting of pedopornographic content concerning France after a change of internal detection tool, which led investigators to examine the hypothesis of a deliberate maneuver.
According to Le Monde’s reporting, Elon Musk did not appear in response to a summons of the French justice for a voluntary interview on 20 April.
