Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI launched Grokipedia on Monday, a new online encyclopedia designed to rival Wikipedia, which Musk has repeatedly accused of ideological bias.
The site, described as version 0.1, already hosted more than 885,000 articles by Monday evening, compared with Wikipedia’s over seven million English-language entries. Musk said a forthcoming version 1.0 would be “10 times better” than the current version, which he claimed is already “better than Wikipedia.”
“The goal of Grok and Grokipedia.com is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal,” Musk posted on X following the launch.
Originally slated for release in late September, Grokipedia was delayed to allow developers to “purge out the propaganda,” according to another Musk post.
Musk, a long-time critic of Wikipedia, has accused the site of being “controlled by far-left activists” and urged users to stop donating to it. In August, he argued that Wikipedia “cannot be used as a definitive source for Community Notes” due to what he described as “extremely left-biased editorial control.”
Content on Grokipedia is generated using artificial intelligence, primarily via xAI’s generative assistant Grok. An article about Musk on the site describes him as influencing “debates on technological progress, demographic decline, and institutional biases,” while alleging that “legacy media outlets exhibit systemic left-leaning tilts in coverage.”
Founded in 2001, Wikipedia is a volunteer-run, donation-funded encyclopedia whose pages can be freely edited by internet users.
“Unlike newer projects, Wikipedia’s strengths are clear: it has transparent policies, rigorous volunteer oversight, and a strong culture of continuous improvement,” a Wikimedia Foundation spokeswoman told AFP in an email.
She added that Wikimedia “is – and always will be – human,” noting that “AI companies rely on human-created knowledge to generate content; even Grokipedia needs Wikipedia to exist.”
Grokipedia’s launch has been praised by several right-wing figures, including Russian ultranationalist Alexander Dugin, who called his Grokipedia entry “neutral, objective, accurate,” in contrast to what he described as Wikipedia’s “biased and defamatory” page about him.
AFP
