Musk's Right-Leaning Answer to Wikipedia Is Here

Elon Musk has rolled out Grokipedia, an AI-driven online encyclopedia that aims to compete with Wikipedia by offering what Musk claims is a less biased perspective. The new site—which CNBC noted saw a "rocky" start on Monday, crashing for a few hours after launch—mimics Wikipedia's familiar layout and covers a broad range of topics, but at launch it featured far fewer articles—around 885,000, compared with Wikipedia's 8 million-plus—and appeared to lean more conservative in its framing of certain issues, per the Washington Post. For example, Grokipedia's entry on "gender" adopts a strictly binary definition, in contrast to Wikipedia's broader, more nuanced description.

The site is also drawing attention for factual errors and for reusing content from Wikipedia without attribution. Grokipedia is powered by xAI's Grok, the same language model behind the chatbot on Musk's X platform (formerly Twitter), which in theory gives it access to real-time posts from millions of users. However, this connection to Grok also raises the risk of high-profile errors—Grok has previously produced offensive content and conspiracy theories, issues that Musk's companies have typically blamed on coding mistakes.

Wired notes that Grokipedia has already posted spurious claims, including that social media is spurring a jump in the number of transgender people, and that porn helped fuel the AIDS epidemic. One entry on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack mixes established facts with arguments that Democrats and the media overstated the event's seriousness and President Trump's responsibility, per the Post. Musk's own Grokipedia profile, which Mint notes runs almost 11,000 words, is notably flattering, emphasizing his ambitions to protect "human consciousness" and build a multiplanetary civilization—claims backed mainly by citations to his own company, xAI.

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Musk's relationship with Wikipedia has soured in recent years as his politics have shifted rightward, per the Post. Once a vocal fan, he's recently joined other critics in accusing the site of liberal bias, especially on controversial subjects like vaccines, climate change, and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, for his part, expressed skepticism about Grokipedia's accuracy, arguing that current AI models aren't reliable enough to write error-free encyclopedia entries.