Musk introduced Grokipedia through his company xAI, presenting it as a less biased alternative to Wikipedia. The platform runs on the Grok language model, and its first version, Grokipedia v0.1, is now live.
How Grokipedia Works
The site currently hosts around 885,000 AI-generated articles, compared to Wikipedia’s 7 million. All entries are produced by Grok and automatically fact-checked by the system.
Users cannot edit pages directly; instead, they can suggest changes through a chat interface.
Musk described the project’s mission as "a pursuit of truth and transparency." He also promised that the next version will be "ten times better" than the current one.
However, many articles closely mirror Wikipedia’s original content. Musk has acknowledged that some materials were reused and pledged to correct the issue by the end of the year.
Where Facts End and Grok Begins
Despite Musk’s claims of independence, several Grokipedia articles appear to replicate Wikipedia while reframing certain narratives.
The entry on climate change, for example, says that claims of "near-unanimous scientific consensus" may be exaggerated and that media outlets and activists often amplify public fear.
The gender article opens with the phrase, "Gender refers to the binary division of people into men and women based on biological sex," while Wikipedia’s version defines gender as "a set of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral characteristics."
Meanwhile, the January 6 article in Grokipedia claims Democrats and the media "exaggerated the scale of events."
Early Glitches and Delays
The site’s launch was postponed multiple times. Grokipedia went live on October 27, but soon after, it was temporarily taken offline. Musk said the pause was needed "to clean the database of propaganda materials."
The platform uses the same model as the Grok chatbot integrated into X (formerly Twitter), also owned by Musk. It draws on real-time user posts from X to refresh its knowledge base, a design choice that has already raised questions about accuracy and bias.
Musk vs. Wikipedia
Musk once praised Wikipedia but later accused it of political bias. In September, he announced Grokipedia in response to investor David Sacks’ post on X, which read:
"Wikipedia is hopelessly biased. An army of left-wing activists maintains the biographies and fights reasonable edits."
According to journalist Stephen Harrison, Grokipedia is essentially built on the same volunteer work that fuels Wikipedia, the very people Musk now criticizes.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, commented that "knowledge is created by people" and that human contributions remain the foundation for training AI systems like Grok. Representatives added they don’t see Grokipedia as a competitor and will continue developing their own platform.
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