Elon Musk at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on September 13, 2023. STEFANI REYNOLDS / AFP
Elon Musk did not appear on Monday, April 20, for a voluntary interview with Paris prosecutors, who had summoned the American tech billionaire over a probe into his social media platform X and AI chatbot Grok. Prosecutors told Agence France-Presse (AFP) they had "taken note of the absence of the first people summoned," without mentioning Musk's name. The billionaire dubbed the French authorities "retards" weeks earlier in a French-language X post.
"The presence or absence [of the people summoned] is not an obstacle to continuing the investigation," prosecutors added. They issued the summons in February as part of an investigation, launched in January 2025, into allegations that X's algorithm was used to interfere in French politics.
The probe was later expanded to include the dissemination of Holocaust denial and sexual deepfakes by X's AI chatbot Grok. French prosecutors in February also searched the Paris offices of X, in what the social media giant, which has denied any wrongdoing, slammed as "politicized" raids and an "abusive judicial act."
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