PARIS—French authorities raided the Paris office of Elon Musk’s X and summoned the billionaire for a “voluntary interview,” a major escalation of European regulators’ battles with the social-media platform.
Cybercrime prosecutors said Tuesday that they were searching X’s office as part of a sprawling investigation first opened early last year. The probe has grown from investigating allegations that the platform’s content-ranking algorithm amounted to “foreign interference” in French politics to X’s responsibility for sexualized deepfake images produced by its Grok chatbot.
French officials are also investigating other potential charges against X, including dissemination of child pornography and Holocaust denial, which is illegal in France, prosecutors said.
Tuesday’s raid was conducted by cybercrime police and Europol, the European Union’s law-enforcement agency. The move came as French officials said they were summoning Musk, former X Chief Executive Linda Yaccarino and other employees in April for what they described as voluntary interviews.
Prosecutors described their investigation as being at a “constructive” stage, aimed at achieving compliance with laws in France. Voluntary interviews would be a chance for executives to explain their efforts, they added.
X didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
The summons and raid are the latest signals of a growing trans-Atlantic clash over how—and whether—big tech companies should police online speech.
Long-simmering tensions between the U.S. and Europe over how to handle content on platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X are coming to a head.
European regulators are ramping up enforcement of a new arsenal of content-moderation rules, while the Trump administration and other U.S. officials have accused Europeans of trying to silence dissent, not just on their continent but globally.
Write to Sam Schechner at Sam.Schechner@wsj.com and Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com