Elon Musk’s X is being sued by a major French news agency for allegedly refusing to pay for featuring news content on the social media platform.

Agence France Press (AFP) claims in the Paris lawsuit filed on Wednesday that X, Musk’s new name for Twitter, failed to negotiate with the newswire as required under French law.

Since 2019 France has had a news bargaining code forcing big tech companies to pay news publishers in return for using their content.

AFP said: “This move is aimed at compelling Twitter, in accordance with the law, to provide all the necessary elements required for assessing the remuneration owed to AFP under the neighbouring rights legislation.”

Mr Musk said the claim is “bizarre” as he responded to a tweet about the lawsuit.

“They want us to pay them for traffic to their site where they make advertising revenue and we don’t!?” he posted on Thursday morning.