Tech billionaire Elon Musk failed to attend a “voluntary interview” in France on Monday with authorities investigating his social media platform X over alleged illegal data extraction and the abuse of algorithms they believe interfered in French politics.

The Paris public prosecutor had, in February 2026, asked Mr Musk to appear for questioning on Monday, April 20, as part of the investigation into the allegations. 

The public prosecutor’s office said on Monday that it had “taken note of the absence of the people summoned,” without mentioning Mr Musk, the BBC reported.

However, it stated that the presence or absence of those summoned would not hinder the investigation.

Aside from Mr Musk, the company’s former CEO, Linda Yaccarino, and employees were also summoned for “voluntary interviews” between April 20 and 24 to be questioned about X’s “complicity” in the alleged criminal offences.

The prosecutors said in February that interviews with X executives would allow them to share their positions “regarding the facts,” as well as the compliance measures they planned to implement.

“At this stage, the conduct of the investigation is based on a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French law, as it operates on the national territory,” the prosecutors noted.

French authorities first launched the investigation in January 2025. It was later broadened due to concerns that X users spread Holocaust denial and generate sexualised deepfakes of women and children with Grok, the platform’s artificial intelligence chatbot.

Prior to this, a French lawmaker had raised concerns about X’s alleged algorithm abuse, claiming it could enable foreign interference.

As part of the ongoing investigation into suspected criminal offences linked to content on the platform, the prosecutors’ cybercrime unit raided X in Paris.

X condemned the raid as “baseless” and said it is “an abuse of the act of law enforcement theatre to achieve illegitimate political objectives.” It accused the prosecutors of bypassing established procedures in obtaining evidence.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that the U.S. had told French authorities it would not facilitate their investigation.

In January, the UK authorities and the European Union launched an investigation into the misuse of Grok to generate “undressed images of people and sexualised images of children.”

In September 2024, Mr Musk had snubbed authorities after failing to appear in Los Angeles amid an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into his Twitter takeover.