Elon Musk on Monday unveiled Grokipedia, an artificial intelligence–driven alternative to Wikipedia, developed by his company xAI. The billionaire described the new platform as an attempt to “purge out the propaganda” that he claims has infiltrated the internet’s largest crowdsourced encyclopedia.
The site, which briefly crashed after its launch, already hosts over 800,000 AI-generated entries, compared with Wikipedia’s nearly 8 million human-written articles. Visitors to grokipedia.com are met with a minimalist interface featuring a logo and search bar.
Some of Grokipedia’s early entries reflect Musk’s personal and political views. An article about him describes his public persona as “a blend of innovative visionary and irreverent provocateur,” even listing his fondness for “morning donuts and multiple Diet Cokes daily.”
On more contentious topics, entries have drawn scrutiny. The page on gender transition, for instance, claims available medical evidence is “limited and of low quality” — a stance that aligns with Musk’s own public skepticism and contrasts sharply with Wikipedia’s assertion that scientific understanding in the field has existed for decades.
Other entries include profiles of OpenAI, Donald Trump, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Grokipedia’s article on former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal highlights Musk’s past accusation that Agrawal downplayed the number of fake accounts on the platform — details not found on Wikipedia.
A spokesperson for xAI declined to comment on the launch or the outage.
Musk has long criticized Wikipedia for alleged liberal bias, accusing it of relying on “legacy media propaganda.” He renewed his attacks earlier this year after the site added an entry describing a controversial gesture he made at a political event.
“Since legacy media propaganda is considered a ‘valid’ source by Wikipedia, it simply becomes an extension of that propaganda,” Musk wrote on X, urging donors to stop funding the platform.
Musk’s allies, including David Sacks, a former Trump administration advisor and investor in Musk’s companies, praised the launch. “I hope Grokipedia challenges Wikipedia’s dominance,” Sacks said on his podcast, suggesting Wikipedia could avoid such competition by “stopping the blackballing of conservative outlets.”
Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales responded that while criticism can be useful, AI cannot replace the encyclopedia’s human verification process. “It’s about digging in and doing the work — that’s the only thing I know how to do,” he said.
The Wikimedia Foundation, which manages Wikipedia, acknowledged new challenges as AI platforms increasingly rely on its data for training models. Human visits to Wikipedia have fallen 8% this year, while automated scraping by AI systems has surged.
“People will take information from these tools at face value, and that information may or may not be correct,” said Selena Deckelmann, Wikimedia’s Chief Technology Officer. “The value Wikipedia has provided for over a decade is that it lets people dig into the sources.”
Source: NY Post/ Bangkok Post
Bd-pratidin English/ Jisan
