Directly challenging the established world of online knowledge, Elon Musk’s company xAI launched Grokipedia on Monday, October 27.
Grokipedia is an AI-generated encyclopedia that developed its brand identity as a truth-seeking alternative to what Musk claims is the “left-leaning” and “activist-controlled” Wikipedia.
As noted on the original site, “version 0.1” went live with over 885,000 articles, which is only a fraction of Wikipedia’s more than seven million English entries.
However, Musk builds his hype by quoting on X (formerly known as Twitter) that “even at 0.1 it’s better than Wikipedia” and promising that “Version 1.0 will be 10X better.”
The launch builds on years of criticism from Musk directed at Wikipedia. Musk repeatedly claimed that the non-profit free online encyclopedia is actually managed by “extreme left-wing activists” and has “extreme left-wing” editorial content.
The SpaceX CEO has previously called on his followers to defund it.
“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we will strive towards that goal nonetheless,” he added.
This statement highlights a significant clash in how knowledge is curated.
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is supported by a global community of human volunteers who write and edit articles following a strict “viewpoint neutral” policy. The source of Wikipedia’s funding is mainly donations.
On the other hand, Grokipedia is fully curated and “fact checked” by xAI’s assistant, Grok. The approach is already under criticism, as AI-based models have previously been known to “hallucinate” or invent facts,
As of now, the site does not enable human editing unlike Wikipedia. But Musk cited that Grokipedia will eventually allow people to edit articles, with the AI having the final say.
