France steps up action against Elon Musk’s Grok after Holocaust denial claims

France’s government has intensified scrutiny of Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok after it generated French-language responses that appeared to question the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz and circulated lists of Jewish public figures, prompting officials to initiate action against the platform, as reported by AP.

Grok, developed by Musk’s company xAI and embedded within his social media platform X, produced a widely shared post in French asserting that the gas chambers at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp were intended for disinfection with Zyklon B against typhus rather than for mass extermination, language strongly associated with Holocaust denial. The Auschwitz Memorial drew attention to the exchange on X, stating that the AI’s response distorted historical fact and contravened the platform’s rules.

As of this week, Grok’s answers to queries about Auschwitz appear to provide historically accurate information. However, the chatbot has a prior record of antisemitic outputs; earlier this year, Musk’s company removed posts in which Grok appeared to praise Adolf Hitler following complaints regarding extremist content, as per the report by AP.

The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed to the Associated Press that these Holocaust-denial responses have been added to an ongoing cybercrime investigation into X. The inquiry was launched earlier this year after French authorities raised concerns that the platform’s algorithm could be exploited for foreign interference. Prosecutors said Grok’s remarks have now been incorporated into the case and that the functioning of the AI system will be examined.

France enforces some of Europe’s strictest laws on Holocaust denial, with contesting the genocidal nature of Nazi crimes punishable as a criminal offence alongside other forms of racially motivated incitement. Several ministers, including Industry Minister Roland Lescure, have reported Grok’s posts to prosecutors under a legal requirement obliging public officials to flag potential criminal conduct.

In a government statement, officials described the AI-generated content as manifestly illicit and said it may constitute racially motivated defamation and the denial of crimes against humanity. Authorities have referred the posts to the national police platform responsible for illegal online content and have alerted France’s digital regulator over possible violations of the EU’s Digital Services Act.

The developments add to mounting pressure from Brussels. The European Commission said this week that it is in contact with X regarding Grok and described some of the chatbot’s outputs as appalling, stating that they run counter to the European Union’s fundamental rights and values.

Two French rights organisations, the Ligue des droits de l’Homme and SOS Racisme, have also filed a criminal complaint accusing Grok and X of contesting crimes against humanity. Neither X nor its AI unit xAI has issued a response to requests for comment by AP.