French police raided the Paris offices of Elon Musk's social media network X on Tuesday and prosecutors ordered the tech billionaire to face questions in April as part of a widening investigation into the platform, the Paris prosecutor's office said.

The investigation was launched in January last year by the prosecutors' cybercrime unit and is being widened to examine alleged "complicity" in the possession and dissemination of child sexual abuse images, sexually explicit deepfakes, denial of crimes against humanity and manipulation of an automated data-processing system by an organized group, according to a Paris prosecutors' office statement.

Musk and former CEO Linda Yaccarino were summoned to a hearing on April 20. Other X staff were also summoned as witnesses.

There was no immediate comment from X. In July, Musk denied the initial accusations and said French prosecutors were launching a "politically-motivated criminal investigation."

The investigation was first opened following reports by a French lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms on X were likely to have distorted the functioning of an automated data processing system.

It was later expanded after Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot Grok generated posts that allegedly denied the Holocaust and spread sexually explicit deepfakes, the statement said. Holocaust denial is a crime in France.

"At this stage, the conduct of this investigation is part of a constructive approach, with the aim of ultimately ensuring that the X platform complies with French laws, insofar as it operates on national territory," the prosecutor's office said.

Such summons are mandatory, though they are harder to enforce on people who do not live in France. After such a hearing, authorities can decide to either shelve or continue the probe, and potentially put suspects in custody.

X is also under pressure from the EU. The 27-nation bloc's executive arm opened an investigation last month after Grok spewed nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform.

(With input from agencies)