Grokipedia: Difference between revisions – Wikipedia

 

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In 2021, Musk expressed affection for Wikipedia on its 20th anniversary.<ref name=”:0″>{{cite web |last=Higgins |first=Tim |date=October 4, 2025 |title=Why Conservatives Are Attacking ‘Wokepedia’ |url=https://www.wsj.com/tech/wikipedia-conservative-complaints-ee904b0b |access-date=October 6, 2025 |website=The Wall Street Journal |archive-date=October 5, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251005122530/https://www.wsj.com/tech/wikipedia-conservative-complaints-ee904b0b |url-status=live }}</ref> In 2022, Musk argued that Wikipedia was “losing its objectivity”.<ref name=”:0″ /> In 2023, he said he would donate a billion dollars to the project if it was renamed “Dickipedia”.<ref name=”:0″ />

In 2021, Musk expressed affection for Wikipedia on its 20th anniversary.<ref name=”:0″>{{cite web |last=Higgins |first=Tim |date=October 4, 2025 |title=Why Conservatives Are Attacking ‘Wokepedia’ |url=https://www.wsj.com/tech/wikipedia-conservative-complaints-ee904b0b |access-date=October 6, 2025 |website=The Wall Street Journal |archive-date=October 5, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251005122530/https://www.wsj.com/tech/wikipedia-conservative-complaints-ee904b0b |url-status=live }}</ref> In 2022, Musk argued that Wikipedia was “losing its objectivity”.<ref name=”:0″ /> In 2023, he said he would donate a billion dollars to the project if it was renamed “Dickipedia”.<ref name=”:0″ />

In December 2024, Musk called for a boycott of donations to Wikipedia over its supposed left-wing bias, calling it “Wokepedia” in reference to the word “[[woke]]”.<ref name=”:1″>{{Cite news |last=Leloup |first=Damien |date=2025-01-29 |title=Why Elon Musk is calling for a boycott of Wikipedia |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon-musk-is-calling-for-a-boycott-of-wikipedia_6737574_13.html |access-date=2025-10-28 |work=[[Le Monde]] |language=en |archive-date=August 29, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250829210844/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon-musk-is-calling-for-a-boycott-of-wikipedia_6737574_13.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In January 2025, Elon Musk made a gesture at president [[Donald Trump]]’s [[Second inauguration of Donald Trump|second inauguration]] which many viewed as a [[Nazi salute]]. In the ensuing controversy, Musk made a series of statements on [[Twitter|X]] denouncing Wikipedia for [[Elon Musk salute controversy|its description of the incident]].<ref name=”:1″ />

In December 2024, Musk called for a boycott of donations to Wikipedia over its left-wing bias, calling it “Wokepedia” in reference to the word “[[woke]]”.<ref name=”:1″>{{Cite news |last=Leloup |first=Damien |date=2025-01-29 |title=Why Elon Musk is calling for a boycott of Wikipedia |url=https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon-musk-is-calling-for-a-boycott-of-wikipedia_6737574_13.html |access-date=2025-10-28 |work=[[Le Monde]] |language=en |archive-date=August 29, 2025 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250829210844/https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/01/29/why-elon-musk-is-calling-for-a-boycott-of-wikipedia_6737574_13.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In January 2025, Musk made a gesture at president [[Donald Trump]]’s [[Second inauguration of Donald Trump|second inauguration]] which many viewed as a [[Nazi salute]]. In the ensuing controversy, Musk made a series of statements on [[Twitter|X]] denouncing Wikipedia for [[Elon Musk salute controversy|its description of the incident]].<ref name=”:1″ />

=== Idea and announcement ===

=== Idea and announcement ===

AI-powered encyclopedia developed by xAI

Grokipedia is an AI-powered online encyclopedia developed by xAI. An early beta version was launched on October 27, 2025.^[1] Entries in Grokipedia are created and edited by the Grok language model.^[2] Many articles are derived from Wikipedia articles, with some articles copied nearly verbatim at launch, but with additional review and fact-checking with the Grok language model.^[3][4][5] Such articles are freely licensed and carry a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, as is required for derivative works of Wikipedia articles.^[5] As of October 28, 2025, the site has about 900,000 articles.^[6]

Although details of how it works are not currently known,^[2]
visitors to the encyclopedia can suggest edits via a pop-up form for reporting wrong information, but unlike Wikipedia and other wiki-based encyclopedias, they cannot directly edit articles. xAI founder Elon Musk positioned Grokipedia as an alternative to Wikipedia that would “purge out the propaganda” in the latter,^[7] and some people such as Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger responded positively to the release of the website,^[8] while the neutrality of the website (in its 0.1 version as of October 28, 2025) has been disputed by several other sources.^[9][10][11]

Background

Wikipedia is a free online multilingual encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers through open collaboration.^[12] Wikipedia has long been criticized for deficiencies in its factual reliability and alleged political biases.^[3] Previous projects seeking to counter bias have included Conservapedia, launched in 2006 to counter perceived liberal bias,^[13] and Ruwiki, forked in 2023 with content modifications widely described as favoring the Russian government.^[14][15]

xAI is an American AI company founded by Elon Musk in 2023.^[16] The original stated goal of the company was “to understand the true nature of the universe”.^[17] Its flagship product is the family of large language models called Grok.^[18]

History

Disputes between Musk and Wikipedia

In 2021, Musk expressed affection for Wikipedia on its 20th anniversary.^[19] In 2022, Musk argued that Wikipedia was “losing its objectivity”.^[19] In 2023, he said he would donate a billion dollars to the project if it was renamed “Dickipedia”.^[19]

In December 2024, Musk called for a boycott of donations to Wikipedia over its perceived left-wing bias, calling it “Wokepedia” in reference to the word “woke“.^[20] In January 2025, Musk made a gesture at president Donald Trump‘s second inauguration which many viewed as a Nazi salute. In the ensuing controversy, Musk made a series of statements on X denouncing Wikipedia for its description of the incident.^[20]

Idea and announcement

In September 2025, Musk spoke at the All-In podcast conference with White House AI and crypto czar David O. Sacks about how Grok consumed data from Wikipedia and other sources to gain more complete knowledge of the world. Sacks suggested that its knowledge base be published as an artifact called “Grokipedia”, saying “Wikipedia is so biased, it’s a constant war.”^[19]

Following the conversation with Sacks, Musk announced in September 2025 that xAI was building a new AI-generated online encyclopedia by the suggested name of Grokipedia.^[21][22] According to Musk’s announcement, it would be an AI-powered knowledge base designed to rival Wikipedia by addressing its perceived biases, errors, and ideological slants.^[23][24] Gizmodo compared the plan to the 2006 Conservapedia project, which it stated had right-wing bias and “is widely regarded as a joke by anyone who tries to wade through its ridiculous articles”.^[25]

Launch

On October 6, 2025, Musk announced that the early beta version of Grokipedia was scheduled for release later that month.^[26][27] The project was postponed briefly in October to address content quality issues.^[7] It launched on October 27, 2025 with over 800,000 articles.^[7] Some articles are nearly identical to their Wikipedia entries, but the format of Grokipedia citations is different.^[28] On the day of launch, Musk stated on X that “Grokipedia.com is fully open source, so anyone can use it for anything at no cost”. Articles derived from Wikipedia carry a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, but the license of other articles is ambiguous, and no publicly accessible source code repository of the backend has been released as of October 29, 2025.^[29][30] Musk stated that the 1.0 full release would be a 10 times improvement to the 0.1 version.^[6]

Reception

This section is missing information about positive reception of Grokipedia. Please expand the section by making an edit requestto include this information . Further details may exist on the talk page. (October 2025)

Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, a noted critic of Wikipedia, responded positively to the launch of Grokipedia saying “The jury’s still out as to whether it’s actually better than Wikipedia. But at this point I would have to say ‘maybe!'”.^[8] Sanger also noted that the Grokipedia article on himself contained a hallucination.^[31]

Shortly after launch, much criticism to Grokipedia focused on its accuracy and biases due to hallucinations and potential algorithmic bias.^[3][32][33] Critics have highlighted entries that promote right-leaning perspectives or favor Musk’s viewpoints.^[10] NBC News noted that the Grokipedia entry for Musk did not mention the hand gesture he made in January 2025, which many viewed as a Nazi salute, while Wikipedia’s article does.^[5] It has also received criticism for entirely relying on AI. Forbes wrote that “while the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia uses human authors and editors, Musk’s alternative is entirely composed of articles generated and ‘fact-checked’ by xAI’s Grok”. They further noted that “some articles on Grokipedia, such as those on the PlayStation 5, automaker Lamborghini, and chipmaker AMD, appeared to be near-identical copies of the corresponding Wikipedia entries”.^[34]

Some content has been noted to align with Musk’s personal views on topics such as gender transition and former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.^[5][32][10]

Time magazine wrote that the article on Musk sometimes “describes him in rapturous terms while downplaying, or even omitting, several of his controversies”. The magazine added that “Grokipedia includes more detailed descriptions of Musk’s views, including the idea of a ‘woke mind virus,’ which Musk claimed ‘killed’ his estranged transgender daughter, who is alive”. Time also criticized a section about Musk’s health and lifestyle for including detailed personal information regarding the daily routine which is not usually found in an encyclopedia.^[11]

Wired reported that “The new AI-powered Wikipedia competitor falsely claims that pornography worsened the AIDS epidemic and that social media may be fueling a rise in transgender people.”^[9]

A spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation commented that “Wikipedia’s knowledge is – and always will be – human…This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”^[4][34] Taha Yasseri argued in The Conversation that the encyclopedia may end up displaying biases just like Wikipedia, as large language models like Grok reflect political and other biases from their datasets.^[3]

See also

References

External links