Investigators have raided the Paris places of work of Elon Musk’s social media website X, previously often known as Twitter.
French prosecutors stated they have been widening their probe into the platform and had summoned its billionaire proprietor for questioning.
Current and previous staff, together with former chief government Linda Yaccarino, who left the corporate final yr, have been additionally summoned as witnesses.
The investigation, initially launched final month, will now cowl the location’s alleged complicity within the possession and distribution of kid abuse photographs.
It additionally pertains to allegations of sexual deepfakes, Holocaust denial, fraudulent knowledge extraction and abuse of algorithms on the location.
The transfer follows complaints that Grok, the platform’s AI chatbot, was getting used to generate sexual pictures of actual ladies and youngsters.
In an announcement, the Paris prosecutor’s workplace confirmed it had carried out a joint raid with the cybercrime unit of the French police and Europol.
Authorities have been taking a “constructive strategy”, the assertion stated, “with the target of finally guaranteeing the compliance of the X platform with French regulation”.
It added that witnesses have been being summoned voluntarily “to permit them to clarify their place” and “the compliance measures they plan to implement”.
The prosecutor’s workplace additionally posted on X to substantiate the raid, and added that it will be leaving the platform.
Final yr, a Sky Information investigation into algorithmic bias on X discovered that the platform was boosting right-wing and excessive content material to customers within the UK, whatever the customers’ political leaning.
Learn extra:
The X Effect: How Elon Musk is boosting the British right
An X spokesperson advised Sky Information on the time of publication that ultimately customers will have the ability to modify their feeds “dynamically”, by asking X’s AI software Grok, which now powers the algorithm driving the platform’s “For You” feed.
British regulatory watchdog Ofcom additionally opened a proper investigation into X final month below the UK’s On-line Security Act to find out whether or not the agency was complying with its duties to guard individuals from unlawful content material.
A spokesperson for X didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
However Musk has beforehand accused French prosecutors of launching a “politically-motivated prison investigation”.
