Elon Musk launches Wikipedia competitor Grokipedia, but it's already showing signs of bias
Elon Musk's latest venture, Grokipedia, promises to be a less "woke" version of Wikipedia. But is it truly the unbiased alternative it claims to be?
Elon Musk, not content with owning X, Tesla, and SpaceX, has now launched Grokipedia, an online encyclopedia he said is powered by artificial intelligence and a more conservative option to Wikipedia.
Musk, currently the wealthiest man in the world, announced he was working on a Wikipedia rival last month after being spurred on by his friend David Sacks, the Trump administration’s AI and crypto czar.
According to Musk, Wikipedia is too “woke” and cites too many left-wing news sources in its articles. In much the same way as Wikipedia, Grokipedia is described by Musk as a “fully open source” that anyone can contribute to for free.
However, Grokipedia says its articles are “fact-checked” by the AI chatbot Grok, and visitors cannot make edits, although they can suggest them via a pop-up form to flag wrong information.
“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” he wrote on X, “We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive toward that goal.”
However, users are already finding faults with the site launched on Monday.
One person on X said that asking Grok to point out inaccuracies on a Grokipedia page will bring up several errors.
“If you put a page from Grokipedia through Grok and asked for the flaws and logical fallacies in the page, it will give you ALL of the flaws. This is embarrassing,” they wrote.
The user also asked Grok to choose which page on George Floyd was most accurate, Wikipedia or Grokipedia. To which Grok embarrassingly appeared to favor Wikipedia. Some Grokipedia entries even admit they are based on Wikipedia itself.
Meanwhile, Musk said he wants Grok to stop sourcing information from Wikipedia pages by the end of the year.
The Tesla founder openly claimed the website was designed to be less “woke” than Wikipedia, and the difference between the two is already evident. As one user on X pointed out, Grokipedia refers to previously jailed far-right U.K. figure Tommy Robinson as simply a “journalist” and “British activist”, whom Musk has been a vocal and strident supporter of. Wikipedia, on the other hand, describes Robinson as "one of the UK's most prominent far-right activists".
Musk previously stated that his AI-generated encyclopedia would be “super important for civilization” and a crucial step toward “understanding the Universe.”
Wikipedia’s host, The Wikimedia Foundation, said Monday that it evaluated how Grokipedia works.
“Wikipedia’s knowledge is — and always will be — human. Through open collaboration and consensus, people from all backgrounds build a neutral, living record of human understanding — one that reflects our diversity and collective curiosity."
"This human-created knowledge is what AI companies rely on to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist. Many experiments to create alternative versions of Wikipedia have happened before; it doesn’t interfere with our work or mission,” it added.