Elon Musk Launches Grokipedia to Challenge Wikipedia, Yet Content Largely Plagiarized

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On October 27 local time, Elon Musk introduced a new knowledge tool to the internet. His AI company xAI launched Grokipedia, an AI-generated online encyclopedia platform. Musk proclaimed on social media platform X that this would be a “massive improvement” over Wikipedia, even calling it a “necessary step” toward achieving xAI's goal of “understanding the universe.” But this ambitious project sparked controversy just hours after its launch.

In late September, David Sacks—an AI and cryptocurrency advisor to the Trump administration and Silicon Valley investor—criticized Wikipedia on X for being “riddled with bias.” Musk promptly responded by announcing xAI was building Grokipedia. Originally scheduled for launch on October 20th, Musk delayed it that day, explaining the team “needed to do more work to clear out promotional content.” A week later, the site—labeled “v0.1”—finally went live.

Related Tweets (Source: X)

Visually, Grokipedia closely mimics Wikipedia's design. Its minimalist homepage features only a search bar, while article pages adopt a similar format with headings, subheadings, and citation links. This similarity extends beyond aesthetics. Some Grokipedia pages carry a disclaimer at the bottom stating “Content adapted from Wikipedia.” Entries like Yann Lecun are nearly identical word-for-word to their Wikipedia counterparts (though Musk claims they will gradually stop using Wikipedia pages as sources).

Image | Comparisons of Grokipedia and Wikipedia entries on Yann Lecun (Source: Grokipedia/Wikipedia)

This creates a glaring contradiction. Musk has repeatedly criticized Wikipedia for “liberal bias,” even calling on X earlier this year to “stop funding Wikipedia.” Yet his new product heavily relies on the very knowledge base he condemns. Lauren Dickinson, a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, noted with some irony: “Human-created knowledge is the very foundation upon which AI companies build their content; even Grokipedia requires Wikipedia to exist.”

However, not all content is directly sourced from Wikipedia. The “original” sections actually best reflect the platform's stance. On gender identity, Wikipedia defines gender as “the sum of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects,” while Grokipedia simplifies it to “a binary classification based on biological sex.” Unsurprisingly, the platform employs derogatory terminology on topics like transgenderism, suggesting social media may contribute to increased transgender populations, with many statements perpetuating stigmatizing narratives about specific groups.

Significant differences also emerge on climate change. Wikipedia states unequivocally: “The scientific community is almost unanimous in its conclusion that the climate is warming, and that this warming is caused by human activity.” Grokipedia's version, however, questions this “near-unanimous scientific consensus,” suggesting that media and environmental organizations “fuel public panic” by framing climate issues “as existential threats, but not always based on commensurate empirical evidence.”

Regarding Musk himself, Grokipedia's portrayal is naturally laudatory. Its Musk entry spans nearly 11,000 words with over 300 citations—more extensive than Wikipedia's 8,000-word version. The article credits him with “ensuring AI safety through truth-driven development rather than burdensome regulation,” dedicating sections to “critiques of regulation and woke culture.” In contrast, Wikipedia documents his controversial gesture at a rally this January, while Grokipedia makes no mention of it.

This selectivity is equally evident in political event coverage. The page on the January 6, 2021 Capitol Hill incident blends facts with insinuations to downplay Trump's responsibility. Grokipedia even targets critical media outlets, labeling WIRED magazine in its entry as “having descended into far-left propaganda.”

Beyond ideological bias, these content discrepancies also stem from inherent technical limitations. While Grokipedia claims articles undergo “fact-checking” by Grok, the large language model's intrinsic “hallucination” issues cannot be entirely eliminated.

Media outlets discovered that the section on Musk's work at the U.S. Department of Efficiency contained misinformation about Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Grokipedia asserted Ramaswamy “assumed a more prominent role” after Musk's departure in May, despite Ramaswamy having left the organization in January—before it became part of the Trump administration. To support this false claim, Grokipedia cited articles from the BBC and Al Jazeera, neither of which mentioned Ramaswamy at all.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales stated before Grokipedia's launch that AI language models “are not yet capable of writing encyclopedia articles.” The Wikimedia Foundation emphasized the value of human collaboration in its statement: “Wikipedia's knowledge is always human-created. Through open collaboration and consensus, people from diverse backgrounds build a neutral, living record of human understanding.”

This is precisely the fundamental difference between the two models. Since its founding in 2001, Wikipedia—despite controversies and imperfections—has become the world's ninth most-visited website through its transparent editing process, volunteer oversight, and culture of continuous improvement. Anyone can view edit histories, participate in discussions, and make corrections. In contrast, Grokipedia operates with complete opacity. Users cannot directly edit pages but only report errors via forms. Critical questions remain unanswered: How are articles generated? Who reviews them? What standards govern their creation?

Stephen Harrison, a veteran Wikipedia reporter, notes: “Every major AI system is trained on Wikipedia's freely licensed knowledge. Ironically, Grokipedia will be built upon the unpaid labor of Wikipedia volunteers—the very people Musk has worked to discredit.”

This isn't the first project attempting to replace Wikipedia. Over the past two decades, alternatives ranging from Citizendium to Conservapedia have failed to gain traction. But Grokipedia is backed by the world's richest man and emerges amid an increasingly polarized information landscape. Musk's influence in both politics and business has reached unprecedented heights, while his X platform has become a key battleground for right-wing political discourse. Grokipedia appears poised to extend this ideological bias into knowledge production.

The project remains in its early stages. According to homepage statistics, Grokipedia currently hosts approximately 885,000 articles, compared to English Wikipedia's over 7.1 million entries. Musk expressed hope that Grok would cease using Wikipedia pages as sources by year's end, at which point Grokipedia would rely entirely on AI-generated content.

The core issue isn't whether Wikipedia needs a replacement, but what kind of alternative deserves trust. Wikipedia's value lies not only in the breadth and depth of its content, but fundamentally in its nature as a public good—built collaboratively by global volunteers, free from single-interest control, with all editing processes open and transparent. This openness and collectivity form the bedrock of knowledge credibility.

By contrast, Grokipedia is fundamentally a privatized knowledge platform. Its content is generated by an AI system controlled by Musk, reflecting its creator's worldview, while users lack effective means to participate or oversee the process. When knowledge production and dissemination are concentrated in the hands of a few, and when technological black boxes replace open collaborative processes, we lose not only the diversity of information but also the very public nature of knowledge itself.

Over two decades, Wikipedia has demonstrated a simple truth: reliable knowledge requires open processes, diverse participation, and continuous oversight. These qualities cannot be replaced by AI technology or private capital. While Grokipedia may offer alternative perspectives on certain topics, it cannot replace a knowledge platform that truly belongs to the public.

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Elon Musk Launches Grokipedia to Challenge Wikipedia, Yet Content Largely Plagiarized

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